Doc Rennie’s long hand went up. “You think all epileptics grow rigid and foam at the mouth and fall down during an attack,” he said. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ed. Thousands of them never do. Their seizures manifest themselves only in frantic or apparently insane acts. Sometimes they try to climb walls, sometimes they babble irrationally, and some, during violent seizures, lose all consciousness of their surroundings and attack the nearest person.
“Tilling agreed that, since we had no real knowledge of what took place last night, a test was necessary. Accordingly, this morning you heard me deliberately excite and enrage Julie Welch. And you saw the results: proof positive of her condition.”
I felt kind of dizzy, for a big, black problem was swelling in my mind. After all, Julie Welch had killed her sister, and I was sheriff and sworn to...
Doc Rennie and Fillmore were both looking at me.
“Doc,” I said finally, desperate, “you’re sure this Tilling fellow knows what he’s talking about?”
Doc Rennie smiled. “Well,” he said, “he’s been able to cure — completely — many people like Julie who twenty years ago would have gone to insane asylums or the electric chair.”
“Cure!” Fillmore shouted it.
“Tilling told me over the phone,” said Doc Rennie, “that Julie Welch’s case sounded like a brain lesion — remember that fall from the cherry tree — or possibly a glandular disturbance.”
Hi Fillmore said: “What are you going to do, Ed?”
I thought a long while. When I decided, it was like snapping those steel bands which seemed to have been binding my chest for hours and hours.
“Nothing,” I said. I looked at them. “You two are going to do it all.”
I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the start Doc Rennie gave.
“Doc,” I said, “you’re going to take Julie to this Tilling guy as soon as possible. Hi,” — he was on his feet now and I pretended not to notice what was happening to his eyes behind those thick lenses — “you’re going to stay here and run your paper and pray that Julie gets well soon so you won’t have to wait long before you get married.”
“And what are you going to do, Ed?” asked Doc Rennie, and his eyes were glistening like Hi Fillmore’s.
I yawned. “Going home to bed,” I said. “When I wake up, I’ll have forgotten every word said in this room this morning — like you two will. Come on, Doc. Hi, you take charge and give it out that Julie’s had a breakdown because of her sister’s death and that Doc and you are taking her away for a long rest.”
Hi couldn’t speak but he shook my hand. I could still feel the pressure when I was helping Doc Rennie into the car.
I said, “Doc—”
He said quickly: “You’re worrying about letting people think O’Moore killed Johanna Welch.”
“Yep,” I said. “That’s it.”
“Look at it this way,” he said. “By allowing people to believe a lie, you turn O’Moore’s suicide from a life thrown away to no profit into a sacrifice that will purchase happiness for two very decent people. After all, your townspeople believe O’Moore was insane, so they won’t think too harshly of him.”
So I put it out of my mind. Once in a while I think, “Here I’ve helped cover up a murder by letting people lay it at the door of an innocent man.”
But then I see how happy Hi Fillmore and Julie are — she’s cured now and they’ve been married some time — and it reminds me of what Doc Rennie said. And, funny thing, the old conscience doesn’t bother me a bit.