Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

“Perhaps not. It’s the amount we need to buy a little building in the country, for chronics.

There are so many!”

Minerva, headed for the white ladies, was beginning to think other thoughts. “That’s really very enterprising and wonderful—”

“I’m delighted you approve. I was sure you would. In fact, I’ve told the press—”

“What have you told the press?”

“That you approved. In fact, I said it was your idea.”

“No harm in that,” Minerva murmured.

“You’re always so kind, Mrs. Sloan!”

Minerva thought grimly that beyond doubt this “chronic home” drive would cost her the uncontributed balance of its quota. She had to admit Alice Groves was a good operator. It might, she thought, pay to take Alice into her camp. Then she saw the hat—the sprouted fright—that Netta Bailey was wearing, and she went through the chatting, peanut-eating, one-day seamstresses with a booming, “Afternoon, everybody! Afternoon, Netta! So glad you’re here. I wanted to have a private chat with you— church matters —before you left.”

It was recognition that both delighted and alarmed Netta. Minerva seldom did more than nod to her, at a distance.

The two women were ideally suited to the “little talk” that took place in the “visitors’ powder room,” some half hour later. They were suited in the sense that each knew what she wanted and what the other wanted and each knew what she had of value to the other. It wasn’t even a very long talk, considering that it proposed to settle the lives of a son and a daughter.

Minerva explained her position, rapidly. “You see,” she wound up, “my boy loves Lenore. Crazy about her. Charming girl. I’m crazy about her myself. So unfortunate, dear, old Beau would make a slip at such a time! I have no sympathy with crookedness, Mrs. Bailey….”

“Of course not!”

Minerva squinted, but she could not prove irony in the response. She made a thin, tight mouth, a formidable mouth, and then let it relax into a smile. “However, it was only a slip, a little slip, and his first. It must, of course, be his last. I can hardly send my son’s future father-in-law packing off to prison—”

“God forbid!” There was, at least, no irony in that.

“On the other hand,” Minerva went on, changing her tone to one of intimacy, intimacy tinged with potential regret and the potential withdrawal of intimacy, “we mothers understand things our children don’t. Kit tells me Lenore doesn’t seem to reciprocate his feelings…”

“Oh! I’m sure she does!” Netta was alarmed, but not as much as she appeared to be.

“I can understand it. Kit’s rather a—shall we say, frightening young man, from the standpoint of an innocent young thing.”

“Innocent as driven snow,” Mrs. Bailey murmured.

“Kit’s peremptory, bullheaded, reckless and foolish. I wouldn’t have it any other way,”

Mrs. Sloan said sharply. “But you know and I know how love grows in marriage—”

“Indeed, I do!”

“—so I feel, a word from you, Mrs. Bailey—I must call you Netta, and you must call me Minerva—the right word…”

“I understand perfectly,” Netta gulped. “Minerva.”

“I’m sure you do!”

As soon as she decently could, Netta left the Infirmary and drove home at rocket speed.

The first thing she had to do was to sober up Beau, who’d been drinking like a fish since coming home from the bank. Lenore could be tackled after that. Beau would sober up fast enough when she got through the fog with the news of reprieve. Lenore would be a more difficult subject.

But Minerva stayed on quite a while, even sewed a little. When Willis drove her away, she waved from the window of the Rolls to a contented, gracious Alice Groves on the Infirmary steps.

Henry Conner was in jail.

He could hardly believe it.

Two uniformed cops had escorted him up the steps and taken him into a room and closed a door. The door had been locked and Henry saw bars on the windows. They hadn’t let him talk, and they’d ignored his shout, “Call Lawyer Balcomb!”

Presently, as he paced in the room, the door was unlocked and different officers, men he knew only by sight, said, “This way.”

Then he faced Lieutenant Lacey, who had his feet on his desk and was grinning.

“Evening, Hank.”

Henry Conner had not sworn much in years. He now turned the lieutenant’s office blue.

“Just what ,” he finally managed to ask, “is the idea of picking me up and hauling me into the hoosegow?”

“Don’t get riled, Henry. You’ll be home in time for a good night’s sleep.”

“ You won’t sleep, by God, Lacey, unless you can explain what in the name of jumped-up…!” The square, homely face was brick-red and the gray hair frizzed in sweat. Righteous wrath exploded in Henry’s every syllable.

“Things,” Lacey answered, his Irish grin undisturbed, “were really in a mess here, Henry, a few minutes ago. A call came in from a right upset person, known to us, a Mrs. Agnes Heer, of twenty-six twenty-eight Pine Street—”

“What the hell has that busybody of an Aggie Fleer got to do with me being grabbed by cops?”

“—saying that a dead body had fallen out of the rear end of a car. She got the car’s number. We radioed. They picked you up.”

Henry said, “Oh.” He sat down. “A dead body, eh? Fell out of my car, eh?” His voice rose, “Did that old cheese-butt examine the body?”

“Not closely. She said it was lying in the gutter, hideously disfigured, face bloody, an arm sawed off—”

“She did, eh?” Henry’s voice was tense.

“She did. And naturally we sent out a red flash for the car with the number she gave us.

We told her not to touch the body,” Lacey said earnestly. “What the hell was it, Henry? When Jones and Billings came in here and said they’d picked you up, I knew—”

“It was Minnie,” Henry answered in a peculiar tone.

“Minnie?” Lacey shook his head. “Anyone we know?”

Henry took a deep breath. He stood up. “Look, Lacey,” he explained with control.

“Minnie is a dummy, one of six the department-store people contributed to Civil Defense.

Minnie was made up months since, over at Jenkins hospital by some imaginative young interns, to look like an atom-bomb casualty.”

“I thought it was something of the sort!”

“Thanks,” Henry said. “And good night! And the next time you want me for murder, don’t send a couple of prowl cops after me. They might get hurt.”

“Just a sec.”

Henry kept on going.

He had ample appreciation of the humorousness of his predicament. But he was anxious to finish his evening’s duties. The dummy that had led to his arrest was realistic. But they’d used realistic dummies in Civil Defense drills all over the country for years. The tizzie which the mere sight of it had started in Aggie Fleer was evidence of how the general public would react. There ought, he thought, to be more such “wounded” dummies for the public to see. Nowadays Americans whisked out of sight, in ambulances, every injury, every accident case. They hastily wiped up blood when it was spilled. Only doctors and nurses knew, any more, what wounds were. God alone could guess how half a million Aggie Fleers would act if real bombs started bursting over American streets. Take one look at the casualties and blow their tops, he felt sure.

He’d have to emphasize the point in future CD meetings. Do something about it.