- sideration. But, when the governor told him to go
to the penitentiary and interview Whalen, and then to the city and the locality of the crime for the purpose of learning all he could about Brokoski's death, he damned himself for having mentioned the fact of the woman's presence on that crowded, tobacco-clogged, perspiring morning. And as he left the capitol he resolved that his visit should be astonishingly barren of results.
Inside the warden's private office at the penitentiary he saw Whalen. The man had found the convict's friend, consumption, and Gilman hardly knew him. When the private secretary told him of the application for his pardon, Whalen only smiled. Gilman found him strangely reticent, and after an effort to induce him to talk, said:
"Whalen, really now, did you kill Brokoski?"
The striped convict picked at the cap he held in his lap. A bitter smile wrinkled his pale, moist face.
"Suspected again, eh?" he said, without looking up.
Finally Whalen tired of the examination. He breathed with difficulty, but that may have been due to his disease. At last he raised his shaven head.
