Picturegoer (Jul-Dec 1937)

The Story of the Film — continued chance to make them. Eddie, you must believe me. If you love me, you'll stay and face it." Her arms were round him. She was his world and he had always respected her judgment. "Very well, have it your way," he yielded, "but remember you're gambling with my life and if you're wrong. "I'm not. I know it." Her confidence held, though two officers arriving at the window rapped out the command to "stick 'em up." "You needn't fire. He's giving himself up." she told them. Law-abiding herself, Jo had no experience of the ineffaceability of the prison taint. When Eddie Taylor, tried and found guilty of bank bombing was sentenced to the chair, his principal reaction was a flaming resentment against Jo. But before the time arrived for his last meal, the nearness of death — death which he could hardly believe would come to him — made ashes of his anger. He asked the warder, Rogers whom he knew, to tell Jo he was sorry for his rancour. The last meal — chicken, vegetables, coffee— arrived, the tray being carried by Bugsey, a former cell-mate who had been promoted to waiting on the prisoners. The sight of food sickened Eddie. He pushed the tray aside and would have banished Bugsey if Bugsey hadn't continued to talk in rapid tones, his back carefully turned towards Rogers, who watched the other side of the bars with his gun. "Boy, it's going to be foggy to-night. Smell that grub. We gotta new cook — the guy from Tony's restaurant what poisoned three of his customers. What a break for us they gave him a life sentence," he babbled. With nerves on fire, Eddie assumed indifference to everything but a mug of coffee. Prompted by Bugsey, he had seen enough of a piece of paper beneath it, to read the words, "Gun in mattress in isolation ward." Next minute, Bugsey, at Rogers' command, "Put the tray down and get out," had left the cell. Inspiration surged through Eddie as he drank. Next minute, facing the watchful Rogers, he was forcing with his two hands, the bottom out of the tin mug, behind his back, and tearing the side into jagged halves. Another minute and Rogers was shouting to a warder, "Tommy, call the hospital. Taylor's ripped himself up." Weak in body, after a blood transfusion for which Rogers supplied the necessary, Eddie came to, with spirit still in fighting trim. To reach the isolation ward, he lunged out at his attendants, creating such a disturbance that the desired haven was reached. Lying prone in the isolation cell, watched through a grille by a warder, he worked to find an opening in the ticking on the mattress's offside. Among the stuffing, his hand felt— blessed relief — something hard. When the doctor, escorted by two warders, entered the cell for final inspection of the man who had been kept alive to die, they found him sitting upright with levelled gun. The very circumstances that make prison so hard a place to leave, worked now in Eddie's favour. It was comparatively easy for him to order the warders with upraised hands over to the wall and to lock them in the cell, keeping Dr. Hill the while under subjection by pointing the revolver within an inch of his back. Hospital quarters were fortunately close to the yard. The fog, of which Bugsey had spoken, also played into Eddie's hand. Keeping the doctor covered, he had reached the yard and was making towards the prison gate before the alarm had been sounded. Powerful searchlights on the bridge above came into play. From a loud-speaker, Eddie could hear the reverberating command, " All guards ... all guards . . . warden speaking . . . warden speaking. . . . Get Taylor and shoot to kill . . . save Dr. Hill if possible." "Go on, doc.," Eddie ordered. "The warden sure don't want you to die, but you're going to, if we get to the gates and they don't open them." He shouted to one of the guard. "Tell the warden I want to talk to him — come to the truck gate, or I'll let the doctor have it." "Okay, Taylor." Cautiously, Eddie, urging the doctor forward, crossed the yard to the gate and shouted to the warden, whose outline could be seen above on the bridge. "Open up, or I croak Hill !" "Shooting Hill won't open that gate. Every man in service of this prison takes that chance. Dr. Hill will have to take his," the warden answered. "Warden, open the gate ! He'll kill me ! " the doctor implored. His whine did Eddie's heart good. Had the doctor been a man of courage, the getaway must have failed. But why was there a delay? For a full three minutes the iron gate remained closed, while Eddie shouted, and the doctor became hysterical in his entreaties to be allowed to live. From the bridge came sounds of interrupted action; voices, men at the run, and finally the warden's voice. "Taylor . . . you've been pardoned. A teletype message from Washington. The killer in the bank bombing has been proved to be Monk Mendall, your former cellmate — put down your gun." But Eddie's suspicious streak had been too long fostered to be obliterated by a few dramatic sentences. Anger at this last obstacle choked him almost as he shouted : " Who d'you think you're kidding ? Open that gate." "It's the truth, Taylor. Let the doctor go, and come to my office," the warden urged. "Quit stalling. Open up, or Hill gets it." "You're a free man, Taylor. Put down your gun." Furious, Eddie roared out an ultimatum. " I'm giving you twenty to make up your minds. One, two, three, four . . . five . . ." he had reached nineteen when a wellknown voice spoke, as a figure in dark clothes with a dog collar loomed up ten paces from Eddie. "Sure, you wouldn't be thinking of killing me ? " Father Dolan said. " You're a free man. Read it for yourself on the tape . . . it's the truth." Beyond even the father's appeal, Eddie shouted to him to get back. " Stay wHere you are ... or I shoot. I don't believe any of you." "Then I can't open the gate." " Ah ! I thought you were in it, too . . . nineteen . . . twenty." Eddie fired. "Guards, hold your fire, I'm not hit," called Father Dolan. If Eddie had been himself, he must have noticed the slight catch that preceded the words. "Open the gate, warden," the father continued firmly. A word of command from the bridge and the gate swung open. Eddie, going to freedom, saw the father sway. He dared not look back to stay with the man his shot had killed, who was lying on the prison stones, in his hand the teletype message conveying the facts of Eddie's pardon. By some means, details of which Eddie never could remember, he reached a telephone booth and urged Jo to meet him at a derelict freight yard. Exhausted from a flesh wound in the arm, he waited dully, with racking head till she came to him. She had borrowed Whitney's fast coupe1 for the journey. Her look and touch, the knowledge that she loved him, eased the pain that was more of the spirit than the body, but failed to remove it. "Jo ... I killed Father Dolan," was all he could say. " I'm a murderer. I can't take this rap . . . I only wanted to kiss you once before they get me." "I'm never going to let them get you," she said fiercely. "Never." She bundled him into the car. Half conscious, he dimly heard her crashing a chemist's window on the outskirts of town, and driving on. In a quiet spot, she spread out her bandages and dressed his arm. "I can still see Father Dolan 's face," he persisted. "I'm through. You've got to go back to Bonnie and forget you ever met me." In the darkness, he could hear her sob. " No, Eddie . . . no. I'll never give you up. It wasn't your fault. It was mine. I killed Father Dolan the night I wouldn't let you run away. We're going together. We have a right to live." "You have. I haven't. They'll get me and. . . ." "Maybe they will get you, but if they do, they'll have to get me too . . . and they have to find us first." For the greater part of a year, the police were still searching. The reward of five hundred thousand dollars for the arrest and conviction of Eddie and Joan Taylor was never claimed. Eddie, recovering normal strength, fought with all the underworld knowledge at his command, to keep himself and Jo fed, clothed and free. Rapidly Jo accustomed herself to her new role, becoming used to filling up the car tank with petrol or robbing the till while Eddie held the station attendants at the point of a revolver. For the most part, their crimes were limited to the means of acquiring food and drink, but it followed that the major delinquencies of the State were fastened upon them and that police vigilance on their trail increased, not diminished. When Jo's baby was born, by her wish, in a deserted shack, miles from hospital or town, Eddie reached a conviction. This wee creature, come into the world through Jo's suffering, must have a chance to be a decent citizen. He talked to Jo, argued and persuaded. Finally, she agreed to write to Bonnie, who wrote back of her willingness to meet Jo and the baby at an isolated house not far from the State border. Public Defender Whitney had proved a staunch friend. Jo, having worked in his office, knew that it must have been at the risk of losing his job that he arranged a passage for herself and the baby to Havana. Eddie, hoping to get across the border, would join them later. "Come on, kid; it's time to go," he said gruffly, masking his dread of losing her, even for a few weeks. He helped her into the car and they fed the baby with tinned milk. Jo's tenderness to the mite gave Eddie a queer pang. He, too, touched the tiny, puckered face with his finger before taking the wheel. They made the journey without hindrance and in record time. By six o'clock, Eddie saw Jo disappear through the doorway of the house, where Whitney and Bonnie had promised to have a supply of clothes and money. Eddie had no wish to meet his sister-in-law who had strenuously fought against Jo's engagement and marriage. Yet he couldn't resist leaving the car and peering unseen through the uncurtained window of the room, whence voices issued. They were all there; Bonnie, fairhaired, a gentle look on her somewhat sharp features, Whitney in shirt sleeves, and Jo seated, giving the baby, on whom all eyes were bent, a bottle. "Gosh, he's cute!" he heard Bonnie say, and saw Jo getting up and slipping something into her sister's hand. "There!" Eddie heard her say, "I've written everything out. Keep him well and happy till I send for him." In the argument that greeted her appeal, Whitney moved nearer the window. Eddie, obliged to move out of earshot, went back to the car with pulses racing. In a minute or so, Jo came running up, whitefaced in the darkness, but overjoyed at find him still there. " I told them I couldn't leave you now," she said. Silently he drew her to him. Six miles from the border, while she left the car to get some cigarettes from a machine, he felt a shiver. "Come closer, Jo," he begged, helping her in. " I never knew two people could be so close," she whispered. Her voice changed. "Eddie, look out !" Too late he had seen a police car cutting in behind them from a side turning. A trooper on a motor cycle ahead shouted, "Stop that car or we'll let you have it ! " Eddie answered by accelerating. Machine-gun bullets ripped along the back window of the coupe\ Darling! Are you hurt?" Jo implored. "Didn't scratch me," he lied. " Hit you ? " "No." "Don't be afraid. We'll make it, darling." Running the coupe into the side, Eddie, conscious of pain to come, lifted Jo and hurried with difficulty into the coppice which completely screened the road. The smell of earth, the tracery of leaves, the quiet tree trunks visible in the starlight, gave him a fleeting sense of peace. Then pain overwhelmed him. With sweating brow, he gripped Jo. A shot rang out. She sagged in his arms. "Jo!" he called. He saw that she was going. Pain, mental and bodily, became merged into Father Dolan's voice calling from the other side. "Eddie . . . Eddie . . . you're both free . . . the gates are opened." 26