Presently a guard climbed the iron stairway with a visitor and led the way along the deck outside the tier of cells where Clay had been put.

“He’s in seventy-four, Mr. Durand,” the man said as he approached.  “I’ll have to beat it.  Come back to the office when you’re ready.”

The ex-pugilist had come to gloat over him.  Clay knew it at once.  His pupils narrowed.

He was lying on the bed, his supple body stretched at graceful ease.  Not by the lift of an eyelid did he recognize the presence of his enemy.

Durand stood in front of the cell, hands in pockets, the inevitable unlit black cigar in his mouth.  On his face was a sneer of malevolent derision.

Shiny the Shover bustled forward, all complaisance.

“Pleased to meet youse, Mr. Durand.”

The gang politician’s insolent eyes went up and down him.  “I didn’t come to see you.”

“’S all right.  Glad to see youse, anyhow,” the counterfeit passer went on obsequiously.  “Some day, when you’ve got time I’d like to talk wit’ youse about gettin’ some fall money.”

“Nothin’ doin’, Shiny.  I’m not backin’ you,” said Jerry coldly.  “You’ve got to go up the river.”

“Youse promised—­”

“Aw, what the hell’s eatin’ you?”

Shiny’s low voice carried a plaintive whine.  “If you’d speak to de judge—­”

“Forget it.”  Durand brushed the plea away with a motion of his hand.  “It’s your cell pal I’ve come to take a look at—­the one who’s goin’ to the chair.”

With one lithe movement Clay swung down to the floor.  He sauntered forward to the grating, his level gaze full on the ward boss.

“Shiny, this fellow’s rotten,” he said evenly and impersonally.  “He’s not only a crook, but he’s a crooked crook.  He’d throw down his own brother if it paid him.”

Durand’s cruel lips laughed.  “Your pal’s a little worried this mornin’, Shiny.  He ain’t slept much.  You see the bulls got him right.  It’s the death chair for him and no lifeboat in sight.”

Clay leaned against the bars negligently.  He spoke with a touch of lazy scorn.  “See those scars on his face, Shiny—­the one on the cheek bone and the other above the eye.  Ask him where he got ’em and how.”

Jerry cursed.  He broke into a storm of threats, anger sweeping over him in furious gusts.  He had come to make sport of his victim and Lindsay somehow took the upper hand at once.  He had this fellow where he wanted him at last.  Yet the man’s soft voice still carried the note of easy contempt.  If the Arizonan was afraid, he gave no least sign of it.

“You’ll sing another tune before I’m through with you,” the prize-fighter prophesied savagely.

The Westerner turned away and swung back to his upper berth.  He knew, what he had before suspected, that Durand was going to “frame” him if he could.  That information gained, the man no longer interested him.