freedom made by the governor fails to move him. When the reporter of the News, sent by the governor to Aspara, gave him the message which pointed the way to possible freedom, the condemned man spurned the chance to save his life. Even the pleadings of his wife, a fragile, pitiable creature, failed to move him. He flung her angrily from him and snarled: "Me confessa to priest only.'”
And the world read and chuckled. The suspense was lifted. Aspara was to die—the story of the death agony was to be told in all its gruesome details.
Mac wrote the story of the hanging the night before it happened. It was an easy task, for people go to the scaffold in much the same way. There are certain things that one can. be practically certain about. The shudder and the drooping forward of the body at the first sight of the gallows is always perfectly safe. The Criminal Court building, too, is a splendid setting for a tragedy of this kind. The condemned cell is on the top floor and the procession reaches the yard of the Parish prison by a winding stairway. Then the tread of the feet on the paved flooring, then the glimpse of the gallows, and the shudder, and then—that was as far as Mac ever got. The rest of the journey could be taken as certain to go off without a mishap.
As the Aspara procession turned the corner, Mac jumped to the ’phone which he had preempted in Judge Skinner’s office.
"Let her go, John!” he shouted.
Then, while he rushed down the stairs and into the prison yard to see the victim cut down, and get the intimate details for the home edition, a thousand sturdy voices began to yell through the streets of the city:
"All about the hangin’ of Aspara."
It was half an hour later before the Index got on the street.
Two months after Aspara’s death Keene and Mac and the city editor had the heartiest sort of a laugh. The city apothecary had just handed down his finding in the case of the holy-picture cards and the white powder they contained. It stated that he had tried the substance on rats and found that it was a slow poison of the deadliest sort.
"It’s a pity we can’t tell the truth for once and get the laugh on them all,” said Mac as he picked up the half-emptied package of quinine from Keene’s desk.
"It would be the best sort of a joke,” said the city editor.
"Yes,” opined Keene, "but remember there will be other hangings—at least I hope so. The last edition certainly broke all records for sales, and our circulation has grown steadily ever since. People are coming to know who feeds them the right sort of stuff, and we must not spoil it."
"Well, anyway,” commented Mac, "we made the old fogies follow us a half dozen times. I’m satisfied. But just let the city apothecary get gay with me!”
