“Now,” said Winwood to Captain Jamie, “though we don’t know where it is, the dynamite is safe.  Standing is the only man who does know, and he can’t pass the word out from the dungeon.  The men are ready to make the break.  We can catch them red-handed.  It is up to me to set the time.  I’ll tell them two o’clock to-night and tell them that, with the guards doped, I’ll unlock their cells and give them their automatics.  If, at two o’clock to-night, you don’t catch the forty I shall name with their clothes on and wide awake, then, Captain, you can give me solitary for the rest of my sentence.  And with Standing and the forty tight in the dungeons, we’ll have all the time in the world to locate the dynamite.”

“If we have to tear the prison down stone by stone,” Captain Jamie added valiantly.

That was six years ago.  In all the intervening time they have never found that non-existent explosive, and they have turned the prison upside-down a thousand times in searching for it.  Nevertheless, to his last day in office Warden Atherton believed in the existence of that dynamite.  Captain Jamie, who is still Captain of the Yard, believes to this day that the dynamite is somewhere in the prison.  Only yesterday, he came all the way up from San Quentin to Folsom to make one more effort to get me to reveal the hiding-place.  I know he will never breathe easy until they swing me off.

CHAPTER III

All that day I lay in the dungeon cudgelling my brains for the reason of this new and inexplicable punishment.  All I could conclude was that some stool had lied an infraction of the rules on me in order to curry favour with the guards.

Meanwhile Captain Jamie fretted his head off and prepared for the night, while Winwood passed the word along to the forty lifers to be ready for the break.  And two hours after midnight every guard in the prison was under orders.  This included the day-shift which should have been asleep.  When two o’clock came, they rushed the cells occupied by the forty.  The rush was simultaneous.  The cells were opened at the same moment, and without exception the men named by Winwood were found out of their bunks, fully dressed, and crouching just inside their doors.  Of course, this was verification absolute of all the fabric of lies that the poet-forger had spun for Captain Jamie.  The forty lifers were caught in red-handed readiness for the break.  What if they did unite, afterward, in averring that the break had been planned by Winwood?  The Prison Board of Directors believed, to a man, that the forty lied in an effort to save themselves.  The Board of Pardons likewise believed, for, ere three months were up, Cecil Winwood, forger and poet, most despicable of men, was pardoned out.