o stop him."

"You don't have to tell me that. Anybody who can swing a pick like
that--"

"Now let me tell you how they happened to catch him. Maybe you heard--he
and Dago Frank were in the act of breaking into the Western-Danish
Bank. Part of this I'm giving you now came straight from Frank himself.
He says that they were in the alley, in the act of jimmying a window,
and all at once Kinney straightened up as if something had hit him and
let the jimmy fall with a thump to the pavement. Frank said he thought
that the man had 'gone off his nut,' but it's my private opinion that he
had been somewhat deranged all the time he was in Seattle, and he just
came to, more or less, that minute. The man hardly seemed to know what
he was doing. 'Have you lost your guts, Kinney?' Frank asked him; and
Kinney stood there, staring like he didn't know he was being spoken to.
He put his hands to his head, then, like a man with a headache. And the
next instant a cop came running from the mouth of the alley.

"Kinney was heeled, but he didn't even pull his gun. He still stood with
his hands to his head. All his pards in the underworld always said he'd
die before he'd give up, but he let the cop take him like he was a baby.
Frank got away, but they got him, you remember, three weeks later. After
some kind of a trial Kinney was sent down here."

Sprigley paused and shifted his gun from his right to his left shoulder.
"You'll say that's all common enough," he went on. "Now let me tell you
another queer thing. You know, the chief has started a system here to
keep track of all the prisoners, with the idea of making them good
citizens when they get out. He has them all fill out a card. Well, when
this man Kinney turned in his card, he had written 'Ben' on it, but the
rest was absolutely blank.

"Mr. Mitchell thought at first that the man couldn't write. It turned
out, though, that he can write--an intelligent hand, and spell good too.
Then Mitchell decided he was just sulking. But his second guess was no
better than his first. I haven't got Mitchell persuaded yet, and maybe
never will have him persuaded, but I'm confident I know the answer. The
reason he didn't fill out that card was because he couldn't remember.

"He couldn't remember where or when he was born, or who were his folks,
or where he had come from, or how he had spent his life. He knew that
'Ben,' his first name, sounded right to him, but 'Kinney' didn't--the
reason likely bei