Light in Darkness

By Peter B. Kyne

The escape of two convicts strangely results in three persons, strangers to the others, becoming temporary companions; The Deputy Sheriff of Santa Paula, a newly convicted man, and a woman. Many years later, an equally strange reason throws them together again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066412876

Peter B. Kyne

A native of San Francisco, Peter B. Kyne was a prolific screenwriter and the author of the 1920 bestseller Kindred of the Dust. His stories of Cappy Ricks and the Rick's Logging & Lumbering Company were serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan magazine. He died in 1957.

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Peter B. Kyne

Light in Darkness

Published by Good Press, 2020

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066412876

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ANYONE seeking a metaphor to fit the Ingleside District would be very apt to allude to it as the back yard of San Francisco. Most back yards are unlovely, containing much that would not charm the eye if displayed on a front lawn. And this is true of Ingleside. There one may find, for instance, truck gardens tilled by immigrants from southern Italy—untidy folks who dwell in untidy houses of peculiar architecture; tumble-down fences, flocks of geese, belligerent goats, and a hog ranch or two existing in defiance of an ordinance made and provided; and lastly, perched on the slope of the hill, the scarlet geraniums in the well-kept grounds before its portals giving the lie to its apparent superiority over the remainder of the district, there is a large stone building which certain esthetic persons are wont to designate the House of Correction, but which the hoi polloi refer to bluntly as the county jail.

This public institution, however, has little to do with our story, and is mentioned merely because this tale, being a short story, must of necessity begin there. If it began elsewhere the necessity for long explanations might be productive of a novel. Also, on the day the story begins, there was a deal of excitement around the county jail, and this also must be explained, for had it not been for this excitement and the conditions arising out of it, quite probably there would not have been any story to relate!

We will commence, therefore, with the arrival in San Francisco of Deputy Sheriff Bradley (Brad for short) Milligan of Santa Paula, convoying a convicted felon en route to the State Penitentiary at San Quentin. Brad Milligan was new to his job, and this was his first visit to what the newspapers down his way called the metropolis; hence, when he arrived late in the afternoon and learned that it would not be possible for him to continue on to San Quentin and deliver his prisoner to the warden there the same day, he did not (as he learned to do subsequently) betake himself and his unwilling charge to the chief of police and request the official courtesy of a night's board and lodging for his prisoner in the city prison. For there is but one small mail-order calaboose in Santa Paula, the county seat; the county accords free lodging to the prisoners of the municipality, and the municipality, not to be outdone in decency, pays the county board for its prisoners. It is doubtful if Brad Milligan had ever heard of a city prison;