The man was half pulling, half carrying her down her own front yard. His car was at the curb. He yanked open the door on the passenger’s side, and sent her reeling in with a blow on the back. Her head came into violent contact with the steering wheel. Again there was no pain, only a momentary blackness passing before her eyes.
Before she could try to escape again, he was around the car and into the driver’s seat, fumbling with the ignition. When she made a motion toward the door, the back of his right hand came crashing up against her face. This time she felt blood on the inside of her mouth. Her head snapped back and she could not seem to right it again. She knew somehow she could resist no more.
After that she was aware of events only as an indifferent spectator, not as an actor in them. The engine started and the car lurched forward. But something was wrong. The car rode with a strange jolting motion, and the man had to wrestle with the wheel. Finally he stopped, got out, and went around to the front of the car to investigate. There seemed to be some trouble with a front tire.
Vaguely then there came to Kit the consciousness that she was not alone. The women had not been running about aimlessly after all. They had been trying to help her. And one of them apparently had done something to one of the tires.
The man had gotten back into the driver’s seat again. But now there was activity in the street ahead. Two cars were there, completely blocking the way. Kit saw women running away from the cars. The man braked with a loud curse.
He got out again, and strode to the barricade. What he found apparently didn’t please him. He seemed to be searching for keys to the stalled cars with a desperate kind of urgency.
When he returned to Kit he had a wild look. She had had no opportunity to consider whether he was insane or not. But he certainly seemed to be at that moment. He screeched the car into reverse, and backed a few feet. Then he wrestled strenuously with the wheel and the car roared forward. He was taking to the sloping lawns to avoid the barricade. The car kicked and bucked as it hit the uneven ground, and the flat tire made matters worse. Kit had to hang on grimly to avoid being smashed against the dashboard.
Then he did what she had been afraid that he would do. As he swerved to get back into the street, the big elm in the Standish yard loomed up before them. A more skillful driver might have avoided it, but the man was in a panic by this time. The car slammed straight into the tree with a crunching of metal that sounded final and irrevocable.
Kit, who had seen it coming, saved herself from injury by leaping sharply back from the windshield.
The man sat there for a full minute after the crash, venting his fury in terrible oaths. Then he turned to her, a convulsive fury in his face.
“Your friends think they’re going to save you but they’re not!”
He had her by the wrist again and was pulling her out of the car on the driver’s side. Then he commenced to run, over the lawns, in the direction of the woods behind the houses. She couldn’t keep pace with him. She staggered and fell. For a few steps he simply dragged her along, then stopped to yank her back to her feet.
She didn’t know exactly how the next thing came about. She didn’t know whether the women had followed them and overtaken them, or whether they had anticipated the man’s action and were there waiting. But suddenly — they were there. Six or seven shouting, infuriated women. And every one of them brandished a weapon — a shovel, a pitchfork, an axe, a butcher knife.
The man screamed.
She saw and heard the end of it dimly, half-consciously. He had let go of her wrist and left her lying in the grass. And he had tried to run in another direction, only to be intercepted by a woman wildly swinging a grass sickle.
He tripped then and fell in a coil of garden hose. When he rose again, he was surrounded on all sides. He backed against the wall of a house and the pitchfork lunged forward to within an inch of his chest, and stayed there. She could hear him sobbing like a child.
Finally — and it was the last sound she was aware of — she heard the police siren. Someone had thought of that too.
When she came home the next morning with a few strips of adhesive tape covering her scars, every last one of them was there. They brought their own coffee and rolls, and had a breakfast party in her living room. What she had most on her mind was apologies and gratitude.
But there was something else that couldn’t wait either. She turned to Naomi Simpson, dear, chubby, wonderful Naomi. “We’d just had an argument,” she said. “We weren’t even speaking to each other. What on earth gave you the idea of coming into my house?”
“Honey, I’ve got a confession to make,” Naomi said, reddening. “I was plenty mad at you too. I guess I wanted to get even with you in some way. I was probably trying to convince myself you were so close-mouthed because you had something to hide. And then sure enough, as soon as your husband leaves for work, here comes this strange car and this strange man. Do you know what I thought, honey? I thought you had a boy friend on the side. So I came right in your back door. I was going to catch you. Of course when I saw him there with that knife... Kit honey, you’ve got a big, king-size apology coming from me!”
They all laughed at that, although it was almost not very funny.
The Musical Doll
by Helen Kasson
The little girl seemed serious and intelligent far beyond her years. Perhaps that was only natural though, the Inspector told himself. Murder, in any frame, called for seriousness.
The doll turned slowly, its china arms spread, its hard toes stretched taut in the immemorial position of ballet. The tiny music box beneath her played a sad, nostalgic tune. Minor notes tinkled down, then up, then down again through three weeping phrases. Then the box was silent for a moment while the doll kept turning, until the faint little tune began again. It was a Gypsy song but, because of the small mechanism, it held no Gypsy joy — only hopelessness and a heartbreaking melancholy.
The walls of the room were covered with unframed pictures, experiments in color, style and feeling, groping and unrealized. They might have been dream experiences which, for an instant, the dreamer had understood but had been unable to recapture on awakening.
In one corner stood an easel supporting a half-finished picture of inter-blending planes, while on a tray at its base lay a palette smeared with daubs of paint and poppy-seed oil from an overturned can.
The little girl with the honey-colored pigtails sat on a chair in front of a flat-topped desk, her round amber eyes fastened solemnly on the dancing doll, her body moving in a small circle which continued for a moment even after the notes slowed and finally stopped. She stared thoughtfully, then picked up the box, wound it and set it back on the desk again.
The tune started once more, a little faster now, yet still without gaiety, still mournful. The slightly off-key notes cascaded down and up and down again in weird, disconsolate sequence.
For a moment longer she let her eyes follow the ballet doll in its ceaseless turning. Then, remembering, she looked at the clock on the wall. She arose, walked across the room to a table on which a telephone stood, picked up the slip of paper which lay beside the receiver and dialed a number.
“Hello,” she said, in a thin and reedy voice. “‘Is this the Police Station?” The tinkling notes sounded in counterpoint behind her, making her voice seem even thinner for an instant.