It broke into sound as they plucked the dampened, bloodied gag out, as though they were drawing the laughter out after it, by suction or osmosis.
“No, don’t take those ropes off him yet!” the man in the white coat warned the policeman sharply. “Wait’ll they get here with the straitjacket, or you’ll have your hands full.”
Fran said through her tears, cupping her hands to her ears, “Can’t you stop him from laughing like that?”
“He’s out of his mind, lady,” explained the interne patiently.
The clock said five past seven.
“What’s in this box?” the cop asked, kicking at it idly with his foot.
“Nothing,” Stapp’s wife answered, through her sobs and above his incessant laughter. “Just an empty box. It used to have some kind of fertilizer in it, but I took it out and used it on the flowers I–I’ve been trying to raise out in back of the house.”
Murder at Hand
by Hugh B. Cave
Love came to Danny Phillips once in his life — and then it sent him to the Chair.
“Sure, I seen it,” Murdock said. “How could I help but see it, with him standin’ right beside me when the gun went off? But so help me, Captain, I never dreamed he’d do a thing like that!”
Danny Phillips hadn’t dreamed it either, exactly. With a brain like Danny’s you don’t elaborately plan things ahead of time, it would be a waste of effort.
Danny Phillips had a frail, sickly little body, an expert pair of hands, and a face freely decorated with pimples. Everyone knew Danny. He lived at Mrs. Macusker’s rooming house on Everett Street (three dollars a week for a bed, a chair, a bureau and four walls) and made his living by picking pockets.
It wasn’t much of a living. It could have been, of course, if he had worked at it, but unless there was a pronounced ache in Danny Phillips’ stomach the idea of picking a pocket or two seldom occurred to him. He preferred to hang around the boys at the Everett Street Social Club or take long aimless walks for himself down around the waterfront. Danny Phillips suffered vaguely from imagination.
He was merely out walking, for instance, the day he first saw the girl. He’d been down on Canal Street, watching a gang of husky stevedores at work, and as he ambled homeward his eyes had that faraway look in them and he was totally oblivious to his surroundings. He ran right into this stout lady with the armful of bundles.
Danny said, “Oops! Pardon me, lady,” and stood there looking helpless. The lady cussed him out, so instead of helping her pick up the bundles Danny ducked, ran, and buried himself in the midst of a crowd of people in front of a store window.
He came up the way a cork bobs up in a whirlpool, and when he did so, there was the girl right beside him.
Danny took one look at her and was sunk.
You didn’t run across girls like this one in the districts generally frequented by Danny Phillips. Most of those women were tough and looked tough. This girl was different. Oh, so different! She was just Danny’s height, and couldn’t have weighed an ounce more than he did, and she was pretty. Not just everyday pretty, but sweet and shy and lovely like something you’d see in the colored folders advertising the faraway places that Danny longed to go to.
Danny stood there beside her and sneaked looks at her. She had a faraway look in her eyes, too, he realized (people were always kidding him about the look in his own) and he wondered why until he saw what she and the rest of the crowd were staring at.
The store was a department store, and the big front window was made up to look like a country town in winter. There was snow on the ground, deep snow, and there were horses, miniature ones, pulling a sleigh, and there were kids walking along with skis over their shoulders. Off in the background there was a little pond where people were skating on the ice. It was all very real and peaceful. Looking at it, you almost didn’t realize it was just a scheme to advertise winter sports equipment. You just felt sort of wishy.
The girl looked wishy, and she looked sad about it, too. Danny decided there was something wrong with her. He decided all at once, the way he decided almost everything, that he had to know her name.
He couldn’t just ask her. If he did that, she would probably call the cops and have him pinched. But he had to know her name.
She wore a brown leather handbag draped from one wrist, and Danny’s gaze fastened on it. He had snatched a pile of handgags in his time, and most of them contained cards bearing the owner’s name and address.
All at once Danny had to have that handbag.
He snatched it. He ducked and ran before the girl even had a chance to get a look at him. Very fast on his feet was Danny Phillips, and very quick-witted when it came to emergencies. Before the girl had screamed twice, he was on the outer edge of the crowd, with the bag stuffed under his coat.
People on the outskirts of the crowd weren’t interested in what was going on near them. They pushed forward to find out why the girl was screaming. Danny just strolled away.
Later, in his room at Mrs. Macusker’s rooming house, he opened the bag and poured its contents out on the bed. He did that very gently, almost reverently, as if merely touching the bag were a privilege.
The little pile of stuff on the bed included a fifty-cent compact, a little ten-cent tube of lipstick, a soiled handkerchief, one dollar and thirty-three cents in cash, and a photograph. The photograph was tucked in a little inside pocket of the bag and might have been there for some time.
And, oh yes, a driver’s license — a New Hampshire driver’s license — with a name on it. The name was Dorothy Alton, the typewritten address was Ennis Falls, N.H., and in pencil under that was another address: 23 Dickson St.
But Danny was interested mainly in the picture.
“Why, hell,” he said aloud, sadly, “she’s just a tramp. It hurt him to say that, even to think it, but he knew it was the truth. No nice girl would carry a picture of Slick Merina around in her handbag, would she?”
Slick Merina was bad, all bad. You could forgive a man for making a living with his wits, for picking pockets and harmless stuff like that, but the kind of work Slick Merina went in for was unmoral. Only last week some poor guy over on Fanchon Street had been cut up and sent to a hospital by two of Merina’s gorillas, just for refusing to pay for “protection” for his lunchroom; and a year ago, or maybe two years ago, the Merina boys had tossed a pineapple into a South Side clothing store and killed two customers.
Slick Merina was smart all right, but he was no good. He had the wrong slant on life.
Danny could understand, though, why this girl, whose name seemed to be Dorothy Alton, had fallen for Merina. Merina was the kind of man a girl would go for. He was tall and husky and good-looking, with curly black hair and a face good enough for Hollywood. Lots of girls had sold their souls to Slick Merina.
Danny put the picture back in the bag, and the rest of the stuff with it, and lay down on the bed, feeling rotten. That was the way with all his dreams — they got punctured before he could even blow them up big enough to look like anything.
Well, it was tough, but this was the end of it. He’d forget her.
The trouble was, he didn’t. A couple of days later hunger took him into a crowded auction room on Dickson Street, and when he emerged — after acquiring a guy’s wallet — he found himself walking down the street and looking at numbers on doors. Number 23 Dickson Street was where she lived.