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By Root 4558 0

simple unchallenged right to attend its ordered and regimented charades sufficed to keep him quiet and content; looking out at them a moment longer, then he turned and struck the handcuffs a sharp and almost musical blow and thundered down at the turnkey: 'What does this mean? Dont you know that no man shall be put twice in the same jeopardy?' then turned again and spoke into the room in that same voice like the rich snore of an organ: 'This man has been illegally arrested. The law compels his right to consult a lawyer. We will recess for ten minutes,' and turned again and opened the gate in the railing this time by thrusting the other two through it and on ahead of him toward the door to the judge's chambers, not even looking back as five men rose at the back of the room and went out through the mam doors, and thrust the Negro and the turnkey into the judge's chambers and followed and shut the door and-the turnkey told this afterward-without even stopping, went on to the opposite door and opened it and was already standing in it when the five men from the courtroom came around the corner.

'Five minutes, gentlemen,' the lawyer said. Then we will resume in the courtroom,' and closed the door and came back to where the turnkey and the Negro stood. But he didn't even look at the Negro; and the turnkey, spent, exhausted, almost comatose from courage and excitement, discovered, realised with a kind of outraged unbelief that the lawyer, who had voluntarily given himself only ten minutes to do whatever he intended to do, was apparently going to use up some of them smoking, watching the lawyer produce the cigar from an upper pocket of the white vest which looked as if it had come right out from under the washerwoman's smoothing-iron five minutes ago-a pocket which contained three more just like it. Then the turnkey recognised its brand and therefore its cost-one dollar-because he had owned one once (and on the following Sunday morning smoked it) through the mistake of a stranger under the impression that it was the sheriff who had married his, the turnkey's, sister instead of he who had married the sheriff's brother's wife's niece, recognised it with grief and outrage too, the same thing happening again but this time a thousand times worse: the man who gave him the other cigar had asked nothing of him, whereas he knew now and at last what the lawyer wanted, was after, had been after all the while, setting the price of his, the turnkey's, corruption at that of one-dollar cigar: this was the forty thousand dollars which the nigger had escaped with and hidden so good that even the Federal Government couldn't find it. Then the grief and outrage was not even outrage, let alone grief; it was triumph and pride and even joy too, since not only had the Tuesday lawyer already lost even before he laid eyes on the nigger, he (the lawyer) wasn't even going to find it out until he (the turnkey) got good and ready to tell him, waiting for the lawyer to speak first, with no organ in the voice either now, which instead was as hard and calm and cold and vacant of trash as that of his wife's uncle-by-marnage: You've got to get him out of town. It's your only chance.' And maybe his (the turnkey's) voice wasn't too calm and maybe to a big-city lawyer it didn't sound too hard either. But even one as big as this one could have heard the finality in it and, if he listened, the scorn and the contempt and the pleasure too: 'I can think of another. In fact, I'm fixing right now to take it.' Then to the nigger: 'Come on': already moving toward the corridor door, drawing the nigger after him, and already reaching from the snap on his belt the ring containing the handcuff key. Tou're thinking of that money. I aint. Because it aint mine to think about. It's his, half of it, that is; whether or not a nigger aint got any business with half of forty thousand dollars aint none of my business nor yours neither. And soon as I unlock these handcuffs, he can go and get it,' and turned the knob and had opened the door when the voice stopped him-the hard calm not even