The underling, a convict, took it and entered it in a book, reserving the slip at the same time for the penitentiary “runner” or “trusty,” who would eventually take Cowperwood to the “manners” gallery.

“You will have to take off your clothes and take a bath,” said Kendall to Cowperwood, eyeing him curiously.  “I don’t suppose you need one, but it’s the rule.”

“Thank you,” replied Cowperwood, pleased that his personality was counting for something even here.  “Whatever the rules are, I want to obey.”

When he started to take off his coat, however, Kendall put up his hand delayingly and tapped a bell.  There now issued from an adjoining room an assistant, a prison servitor, a weird-looking specimen of the genus “trusty.”  He was a small, dark, lopsided individual, one leg being slightly shorter, and therefore one shoulder lower, than the other.  He was hollow-chested, squint-eyed, and rather shambling, but spry enough withal.  He was dressed in a thin, poorly made, baggy suit of striped jeans, the prison stripes of the place, showing a soft roll-collar shirt underneath, and wearing a large, wide-striped cap, peculiarly offensive in its size and shape to Cowperwood.  He could not help thinking how uncanny the man’s squint eyes looked under its straight outstanding visor.  The trusty had a silly, sycophantic manner of raising one hand in salute.  He was a professional “second-story man,” “up” for ten years, but by dint of good behavior he had attained to the honor of working about this office without the degrading hood customary for prisoners to wear over the cap.  For this he was properly grateful.  He now considered his superior with nervous dog-like eyes, and looked at Cowperwood with a certain cunning appreciation of his lot and a show of initial mistrust.

One prisoner is as good as another to the average convict; as a matter of fact, it is their only consolation in their degradation that all who come here are no better than they.  The world may have misused them; but they misuse their confreres in their thoughts.  The “holier than thou” attitude, intentional or otherwise, is quite the last and most deadly offense within prison walls.  This particular “trusty” could no more understand Cowperwood than could a fly the motions of a fly-wheel; but with the cocky superiority of the underling of the world he did not hesitate to think that he could.  A crook was a crook to him—­Cowperwood no less than the shabbiest pickpocket.  His one feeling was that he would like to demean him, to pull him down to his own level.

“You will have to take everything you have out of your pockets,” Kendall now informed Cowperwood.  Ordinarily he would have said, “Search the prisoner.”

Cowperwood stepped forward and laid out a purse with twenty-five dollars in it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a little ivory elephant which Aileen had given him once, “for luck,” and which he treasured solely because she gave it to him.  Kendall looked at the latter curiously.  “Now you can go on,” he said to the “trusty,” referring to the undressing and bathing process which was to follow.