“It is to laugh,” Ed Morrell tapped to me, with the edge of the sole of his shoe.

“I should worry,” tapped Jake.

And as for me, I too capped my bitter scorn and laughter, remembered the prison houses of old Babylon, smiled to myself a huge cosmic smile, and drifted off and away into the largeness of the little death that made me heir of all the ages and the rider full-panoplied and astride of time.

Yea, dear brother of the outside world, while the whitewash was running off the press, while the august senators were wining and dining, we three of the living dead, buried alive in solidarity, were sweating our pain in the canvas torture.

And after the dinner, warm with wine, Warden Atherton himself came to see how fared it with us.  Me, as usual, they found in coma.  Doctor Jackson for the first time must have been alarmed.  I was brought back across the dark to consciousness with the bite of ammonia in my nostrils.  I smiled into the faces bent over me.

“Shamming,” snorted the Warden, and I knew by the flush on his face and the thickness in his tongue that he had been drinking.

I licked my lips as a sign for water, for I desired to speak.

“You are an ass,” I at last managed to say with cold distinctness.  “You are an ass, a coward, a cur, a pitiful thing so low that spittle would be wasted on your face.  In such matter Jake Oppenheimer is over-generous with you.  As for me, without shame I tell you the only reason I do not spit upon you is that I cannot demean myself nor so degrade my spittle.”

“I’ve reached the limit of my patience!” he bellowed.  “I will kill you, Standing!”

“You’ve been drinking,” I retorted.  “And I would advise you, if you must say such things, not to take so many of your prison curs into your confidence.  They will snitch on you some day, and you will lose your job.”

But the wine was up and master of him.

“Put another jacket on him,” he commanded.  “You are a dead man, Standing.  But you’ll not die in the jacket.  We’ll bury you from the hospital.”

This time, over the previous jacket, the second jacket was put on from behind and laced up in front.

“Lord, Lord, Warden, it is bitter weather,” I sneered.  “The frost is sharp.  Wherefore I am indeed grateful for your giving me two jackets.  I shall be almost comfortable.”

“Tighter!” he urged to Al Hutchins, who was drawing the lacing.  “Throw your feet into the skunk.  Break his ribs.”

I must admit that Hutchins did his best.

“You will lie about me,” the Warden raved, the flush of wine and wrath flooding ruddier into his face.  “Now see what you get for it.  Your number is taken at last, Standing.  This is your finish.  Do you hear?  This is your finish.”

“A favour, Warden,” I whispered faintly.  Faint I was.  Perforce I was nearly unconscious from the fearful constriction.  “Make it a triple jacketing,” I managed to continue, while the cell walls swayed and reeled about me and while I fought with all my will to hold to my consciousness that was being squeezed out of me by the jackets.  “Another jacket . . .  Warden . . .  It . . . will . . . be . . . so . . . much . . . er . . . warmer.”