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fine,” Dean said. He drew a sheet of paper to him, held it up into the light so I could see there was a coffee-ring as well as typing on it, and then tossed it into the waste basket. “ ‘Dead man walking.’ Must have read that in one of those magazines he likes so much.”
    And he probably had. Percy Wetmore was a great reader of Argosy and Stag and Men’s Adventure. There was a prison tale in every issue, it seemed, and Percy read them avidly, like a man doing research. It was like he was trying to find out how to act, and thought the information was in those magazines. He’d come just after we did Anthony Ray, the hatchet-killer—and he hadn’t actually participated in an execution yet, although he’d witnessed one from the switch-room.
    â€œHe knows people,” Harry said. “He’s connected. You’ll have to answer for sending him off the block, and you’ll have to answer even harder for expecting him to do some real work.”
    â€œI don’t expect it,” I said, and I didn’t . . . but I had hopes. Bill Dodge wasn’t the sort to let a man just stand around and do the heavy looking-on. “I’m more interested in the big boy, for the time being. Are we going to have trouble with him?”
    Harry shook his head with decision.
    â€œHe was quiet as a lamb at court down there in Trapingus County,” Dean said. He took his little rimless glasses off and began to polish them on his vest. “Of course they had more chains on him than Scrooge saw on Marley’s ghost, but he could have kicked up dickens if he’d wanted. That’s a pun, son.”
    â€œI know,” I said, although I didn’t. I just hate letting Dean Stanton get the better of me.
    â€œBig one, ain’t he?” Dean said.
    â€œHe is,” I agreed. “Monstrous big.”
    â€œProbably have to crank Old Sparky up to Super Bake to fry his ass.”
    â€œDon’t worry about Old Sparky,” I said absently. “He makes the big ’uns little.”
    Dean pinched the sides of his nose, where there were a couple of angry red patches from his glasses, and nodded. “Yep,” he said. “Some truth to that, all right.”
    I asked, “Do either of you know where he came from before he showed up in . . . Tefton? It was Tefton, wasn’t it?”
    â€œYep,” Dean said. “Tefton, down in Trapingus County. Before he showed up there and did what he did, no one seems to know. He just drifted around, I guess. You might be able to find out a little more from the newspapers in the prison library, if you’re really interested. They probably won’t get around to moving those until next week.” He grinned. “You might have to listen to your little buddy bitching and moaning upstairs, though.”
    â€œI might just go have a peek, anyway,” I said, and later on that afternoon I did.
    The prison library was in back of the building that was going tobecome the prison auto shop—at least that was the plan. More pork in someone’s pocket was what I thought, but the Depression was on, and I kept my opinions to myself—the way I should have kept my mouth shut about Percy, but sometimes a man just can’t keep it clapped tight. A man’s mouth gets him in more trouble than his pecker ever could, most of the time. And the auto shop never happened, anyway—the next spring, the prison moved sixty miles down the road to Brighton. More backroom deals, I reckon. More barrels of pork. Wasn’t nothing to me.
    Administration had gone to a new building on the east side of the yard; the infirmary was being moved (whose country-bumpkin idea it had been to put an infirmary on the second floor in the first place was just another of life’s mysteries); the library was still partly stocked—not that it ever had much in it—and standing empty. The old building was a hot