A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Tell!” I exclaimed bitterly. “How is he going to tell anybody anything after this, with no voice left and without being able to hold a pencil to paper!”

“There are ways,” he said. He flagged a nurse who had just stepped out of the ward. “When are you people going to let us at young Mason?”

“Right now, if you want to finish the job,” she snapped back at him. “He’s out of his head from shock and loss of blood. But go right in if you want to make it a murder case; maybe you’d rather handle one of those. However, if you’ll hold your horses and give us a chance to pull him through, maybe you can see him by tomorrow or the day after.”

I saw the other one, Kane, grin behind his hand. She certainly had character, that person, whoever she was. He turned back to me again after that. “I don’t want to make you feel bad, Mason, but we’ve had cases like this before. And the answer is always pretty much the same. Your brother probably got in with the wrong crowd and knew a little more than he should’ve. Who’d he run around with, any idea?”

“No one, good, bad or indifferent. If it’s gangs you’re thinking of you can drop that angle right now. He wasn’t that kind; he didn’t have the time. Know what that kid was doing? Working nights at the hotel, sleeping mornings, helping me out in the shop afternoons, and going to night school three times a week in the bargain! The couple of evenings he had left over he usually took his girl to the movies. He was no slouch, he wanted to get somewhere. And now look at him!” I turned away. “If they’d only broken his leg, or knocked out his teeth, or anything — anything but what they did do! I’m going home and drink myself to sleep, I can’t stand thinking about it any more.” Kane gave me a slap on the back in silent sympathy. Pain-in-the-face said, “We’ll want you on hand tomorrow when we try to question him; you might be some help.”

II

I was with him long before they were, from the minute they’d let me in until they told us we all had to go. About all the poor kid could talk with were his eyes, and he worked them overtime. They seemed to burn out at me sometimes, and I figured I understood what he meant.

“We’ll straighten it out, Eddie,” I promised him grimly. “We’ll get even on them — whoever they are. We’ll see that they get what’s coming to them!”

He nodded his head like wild and his eyes got wet, and the nurse gave me a dirty look for working him up.

Kane and his partner were only allowed fifteen minutes with him that first day, which was a hell of a long time at that, considering that the amputations had taken place less than forty-eight hours before. The questioning fell completely flat, just as I had expected it to. He was as completely shut off from all of us as though there was a wall built around him. The only kind of questions he could answer were those that took “yes” or “no” for an answer — by shaking his head up and down or from side to side — and that limited them to about one out of every ten that they wanted to put to him. I saw red when I saw how helpless he was. It was later that same afternoon that I dug up that permit I’d had ever since two years before when my shop was held up, and went out and bought a revolver with it. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I knew what I wanted to do with it — given the right person!

But to go back: “Did you see who did it to you?”

No, he shook.

“Well, have you any idea who it could be?”

No again.

“Been in any trouble with anyone?”

No.

“Well, where did it happen to you?”

He couldn’t answer that, naturally, so they had to shape it up for him. But it wouldn’t go over, no matter how they put it. He kept shrugging his shoulders, as if to say he didn’t know himself. His face got all white with the effort he was making to express himself and when the nurse had examined him and found out that bleeding had set in again inside his mouth, she lost her temper and told us to get out and please question somebody else if we had to ask questions. Eddie was in a faint on the pillows when she closed the door after us. That was when I went out and bought the gun, swearing under my breath.