“I’ve noticed a few things about people too,” Stevens said. “One of them is, how a bad man will work ten times as hard and make ten times the sacrifice to be credited with at least one virtue no matter how Spartan, as the upright man will to avoid the most abject vice provided it’s fun. He tried to kill his lawyer right there in the jail during the trial when the lawyer suggested pleading him crazy. He will know that the only sane thing to do is to accept the money and the pardon, since to refuse the pardon because of the money, in two more years he not only wouldn’t have the two thousand dollars, he might even be dead. Or, what would be infinitely worse, he would be alive and free at last and poor, and Fie—” and stopped himself.
“Yes?” the Warden said. “Who is Fleh, that might be dead himself in two more years and so out of reach for good? The one that owns the two hundred and fifty dollars? Never mind,” he said. “I’ll agree with you. Once he accepts the money, everything is jake, as they say. That’s what you want?”
“That’s right,” Stevens said. “If there should be any sort of hitch, you can call me at Jefferson collect.”
“I’ll call you anyway,” the Warden said. “You’re trying too hard not to sound serious.”
“No,” Stevens said. “Only if he refuses the money.”
“You mean the pardon, dont you?”
“What’s the difference?” Stevens said.
So when about midafternoon on the twenty-sixth he answered his telephone and Central said, “Parchman, Mississippi, calling Mr Gavin Stevens. Go ahead, Parchman,” and the faint voice said, “Hello. Lawyer?” Stevens thought rapidly
“So he refused to take the money.”
“Then you already know,” Ratliff’s voice said.
“… What?” Stevens said after less than a second actually. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Ratliff said. “V.K. At Parchman. So they already telephoned you.”
“Telephoned me what?” Stevens said. “He’s still there? He refused to leave?”
“No, he’s gone. He left about eight this morning. A truck going north—”
“But you just said he didn’t take the money.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We finally located the money about fifteen minutes ago. It’s still here. He —”
“Hold it,” Stevens said. “You said eight this morning. Which direction?”
“A Negro seen him standing by the highway until he caught a ride on a catde truck going north, toward Tutwiler. At Tutwiler he could have went to Clarksdale and then on to Memphis. Or he could have went from Tutwiler to Batesville and on to Memphis that-a-way. Except that anybody wanting to go from Parchman to Jefferson could go by Batesville too lessen he jest wanted to go by way of Chicago or New Orleans for the trip. Otherwise he could be in Jefferson pretty close to now. I’m leaving right now myself but maybe you better—”
“All right,” Stevens said.
“And maybe Flem too,” Ratliff said.
“Damn it, I said all right,” Stevens said.
“But not her yet,” Ratliff said. “Aint no need to tell her yet that likely she’s jest finished killing her maw’s husband—”
But he didn’t even hear that, the telephone was already down; he didn’t even have his hat when he reached the Square, the street below, the bank where Snopes would be in one direction, the courthouse where the Sheriff would be in the other: not that it really mattered which one he saw first, thinking
“You mean,” the Sheriff said, “he had already spent thirty-eight years in Parchman, and the minute somebody gets him out he’s going to try to do something that will send him straight back even if it dont hang him first this time? Dont be foolish. Even a fellow like they say he was would learn that much sense in thirty-eight years.”
“Ha,” Stevens said without mirth. “You expressed it exactly that time. You were probably not even a shirttail boy back in 1908. You were not in that courtroom that day and saw his face and heard him. I was.”
“All right,” the Sheriff said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Arrest him. What do you call them? roadblocks? Dont even let him get into Yoknapatawpha County.”
“On what grounds?”
“You just catch him, I’ll furnish you with grounds as fast as you need them. If necessary we will hold him for obtaining money under false pretences.”
“I thought he didn’t take the money.”
“I dont know what happened yet about the money. But I’ll figure out some way to use it, at least long enough to hold him on for a while.”
“Yes,” the Sheriff said. “I reckon you would. Let’s step over to the bank and see Mr Snopes; maybe all three of us can figure out something. Or maybe Mrs Kohl. You’ll have to tell her too, I reckon.”
Whereupon Stevens repeated almost verbatim what Ratliff had said into the telephone after he had put it down: “Tell a woman that apparently she just finished murdering her father at eight oclock this morning?”
“All right, all right,” the Sheriff said. “You want me to come to the bank with you?”
“No,” Stevens said. “Not yet anyway.”
“I still think you have found a booger where there wasn’t one,” the Sheriff said. “If he comes back here at all,
