Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1917 — A Trick of Imagination [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Trick of Imagination

By H. M. EGBERT

(Copyright. 1918. by W. G. ChapmanJ. ...Cass —Horace Cass —sat in his cell under the watchful eye of his guard. James Cass —the Honorable James Cass,. Governor of the state and supreme executive, descended from his auto at the gate of the penitentiary. The word ran through the prison. The governor had come to see Simpson —the name under which Cass, the prisoner, was known. Cass had dropped his surname for many a year. Nobody knew that he and the governor were twin brothers—except Cass and Cass, Horace and James. The governor, attended by the warden, walked through the prison toward the line of condemned cells, in one of which Simpson lay, awaiting execution. There were* no other occupants of this part of the prison. Simpson, alias Horace Cuss, had had news of the governor’s coming. The governor walked muffled to the nose, under the pretense of cold: in reality he was anxious that his likeness to the condemned man should not be detected. The guard unlocked the cell door and waited in the entrance. “You may go,” said the governor to him. The guard went, leaving the two brothers alone. “Well, Horace,” said the governor. “Well, James!” “You asked to see me. Of course I am not going to let you die, but you need not have sent me threats. I meant to set you free in a year’s time, and the commutation is now in the mails.” Horace Simpson alias Cass laughed bitterly. “That’s a nice,

brotherly sentiment, to expect me to stay in this hole for a year,” he said bitterly. “What do you expect? You killed Albin.” “Who wanted me to do so?” —— The governor smiled cynically and sat down on his brother’s cot. “You see, Horace, you have never understood the real status of a partnership,” he said. “I have always been a good brother to you. I have never failed to send you help when you needed it. It was highly necessary that Albin, who knew my past, should be out of the way. You volunteered to remove him. It meant a year in prison and five thousand dollars afterward with which to make a clean start. But you weren’t satisfied.” “You have had all the pie in life, James,” answered the other sullenly, ••and I have had the bones.” “Yes, Horace. But our constitutions’ and temperaments were different. Nature, which brought us into this world at the same time, was prodigal with me and niggardly with you. I was the Dr. Jekyll and you were the Hyde of the partnership. But I imagine the allusion escapes you. You were never much of a scholar, Horace.” “Cut it out!” growled the other. “The fact remains that I’ve done all your dirty work while you’veyeen sitin the governor’s chafr?,and living on the fat of the land. And it’s time that stopped.”-

' “You are really ungrateful. Horace,” said the governor bitterly. “You can’t do anything about it, and" you’d better face the facts. As I said, your commutation is. in the and at the end of a year I’ll pardon you and send you five thousand. That’s all I have to say to you.” He turned aside, and at that moment the iron bar which Horace had pulled from his bed descended upon the back of his head. The governor fell forward without a Round. Horace, skilled in the tricks of his trade, had known precisely how hard to strike to produce unConsciousnpwa wtfhdnf frectnring thP Skull. Also, he. knew the exact thickness of the governor’s skull. Horace picked up the unconscious man apd laid him on the bed. Quickly he stripped off his outer clothing, took -off his own, and Changed. The man on the bed looked exactly like the prisoner. The, man on the floor looked exactly like the governor, The slight

difference escaped observation In the gloom of the cell. Horace Cass called for the guard, who came up hastily. • “The poor fellow Jias done himself an injury,” he said. “He became violent and struck the back of his head against the wall.” 1 " The guard stepped hastily inside the cell. The prisoner had muffled his face as his brother had done before speaking; and he kept his head averted. “Well, take care of him,” he continued. “I’ve mailed a ’ commutation of sentence to the warden. I was just about to tell him so when he became violent.” . Horace Cass •strolled blithely ?ut of the penitentiary. He nodded to the warden as he passed through his office, and, without a word, entered the waiting auto. “Drive to the railroad station and wait for me,” he commanded.

The chauffeur started. Arrived at the station Horace went into the waiting rooqi and counted his money. The governor-traveled with a lot of bills; they aggregated nb less thannine hundred and seventy dollars. “Well, it’s better “than five thousand at the end of a year, anyway,” he said. He took a train for the city and quickly lost himself in his old haunts. He meant to have a good time while the money lasted. “I don’tknow if he’s shamming,” said the warden to the prison doctor the same evening, “but Simpson come violent. He swears he’s the governor and that the prisoner stunned him and changed clothes with him.” The doctor found the man in the cell raving. He gave him an injection of : bromide a,nd went away, f ' Left to himself, with splitting head and bitter thoughts, the honorable James Cass realized the predicament in which he was placed. There was no hope for him. He? the mainspring of his brother’s evil actions, he who had,made use of him as a tool, had fallen into the trap he had dug. Before his eyes he saw the electric chair. By (horning he was a physical and mental wreck. “You’re to come to the warden,” announced the guard. Trembling and incapable of speech, he accompanied the guard to. the warden’s office.

“Simpson,” said the warden, “I am very pleased to tell you that a commutation of your sentence has just arrived. You are to be imprisoned for life instead of going to the chair.” _ Cass turned -sullenly away. He owed that to his own action in respiting his brother. He did not start work as a lifer immediately. Prostrated by these events, James Cass found his way to the prison hospital. And, as he lay there there came into his head the wild hope that, just' as he had promised to free his brother at the end of a year, so* his brother would set him free. It was on the fifth day of his sojourn there that the governor called. Horace had spent all his money, and, taking the bull by the horns, had gone boldly to the penitentiary and announced himself. The warden, who had heard rumors of the governor’s disappearance, admitted him at once to the infirmapy. = “Well, here I am, James,” said Horace Cass, seating himself by the invalid’s bedside. Horace smiled, but the man in the bed looked at him with the utmost malignancy. Horace drew a, paper from his pocket. “This is your pardon, dated a year ahead,” he said. “What do I get for it?”

"Get for it?” echoed James. “You’ve got the hold on me,” said Horace sullenly. “I can’t imitate your handwriting. Odd that our writing should be so dissimilar when we are so alike in everything else, even in character. See here, James. I’ll set you free at.once and let you take up your job immediately, if you'll sign this check for a hundred thousand.” The sick man raised himself in the bed. “No y°n don’t, Horace,” he answered blandly. “You got me, but you didn’t make quite such a good bargain as you expected to. Here is the situation: ' “The rumors of the governor’s disappearance must be public property by now. ’ If I disappear more than two or three days longer I’ll be as good as dead. When I come back all sorts of questions will be raised. Maybe they’ll doubt my sanity. Anyway, I won’t be able to keep control of my own money. “If you sign a pardon for me at once, so that I can go out tomorrow, I’ll give you three thousand dollars. That’s all. If you don’t sign it, you’ll get nothing. I may rot in jail here for the rest of my life, but that won’t help you liny. What do you say.” “Five thousand,” urged the other. "Three thousand.” “It’s’ yours," replied the visitor briefly.

It is queer what freaks imagination plays with a man. All this scene ran through the head of the honorable James Cass, governor of . the state, as he entered the cell in which his brother lay, under sentence of death. James Cass, the most upright of all the governors since American history began, looked at the wreck before him. “You wrote to me, Horace, that unless I commuted your sentence you would betray the fact of our relationship,” he said. *1 have tried not to consider this threat apd to judge yopr case solely on its merits. I have deme oA T find evtennating circumstances in the fact that when we were boys I did not watch over you as I should have done. I let you go your way, absorbed in my intes#ts. Nature was against you, Horace. But I find I can conscientiously commute your sen* tence. You will be imprisoned for life, and later I shall consider the possli bility of changing It to. twenty years.”

“Well, James!”