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.
Lacey called, “Just a sec.”
Henry spoke his thoughts. “Never did realize how much education folks need. Matter of fact, I hide those dummies myself. Wonder if I should? Maybe there ought to be a permanent display in a downtown department-store window, so people wouldn’t faint if the real thing ever came along. Fat chance of getting a display!” He started through the door.
“I’ve got more to say.” Henry stopped and looked back gloweringly. Lacey said, “I told you, your ‘Minnie’ fell out of your car—”
“Damn it, I was on the way to a rescue drill. I keep Minnie, and two others, in my garage.”
“Yeah. Well, when Billings radioed in they had you, without knowing at the moment who you were, I got another call.”
Henry groaned. “What’d Minnie do? Grave-walk?”
“Some kids found her. And about fifteen minutes ago, Albert Higgley answered his doorbell and saw something in his barberry bushes. He switched on his porch light and took a good look and fell down six steps. They think his collarbone’s broken.”
“Too bad,” Henry said. “You don’t feel any—liability in the matter? A judge might think differently.”
“I said, by cracking godalmighty, it’s Civil Defense business! Some of us still stick to duty. If a couple of boys played a prank with poor old Minnie, get the boys.”
“We did. One was your boy. Ted.”
He considered. He chuckled slightly. “Ted, eh?”
“They’re bringing him here.”
“Ted never did care much for Albert Higgley,” Henry mused. “The old squirt owns a vacant lot near our place, has grape arbors on it. Nobody picks the grapes, unless kids like Ted do. One year-oh-maybe seven… eight years back—my hoy Ted and a couple of other nippers were having grapes. Old Higgley ambushed ’em. Swung with a heavy cane, no warning, just whammed out of the bushes. Broke Ted’s nose first crack. He wasn’t more’n eight-nine, maybe….”
Lacey rubbed his chin. “I see. You didn’t charge him?”
“Heck, no! Everybody has one or two mean neighbors.”
“He’s charging you. His wife is anyhow. Lewd and obscene exhibition—”
“ What?”
Lacey nodded. “That store dummy was pretty realistic, wasn’t it?”
“Was,” Henry said. “And is. The interns went to some trouble to make it more so. Hair, and like that. Point is, if you’re going to have personnel trained to stand the shock of human beings burned and hurt, you gotta train them with something that looks human.”
“I suppose you do.” Lacey gazed at the ceiling. “Point is, there’s a city ordinance about lewd exhibition. That dummy was female—and naked—”
“Dam’ right! So would bomb casualties be! Clothes burned off ’em, and naked as the day they were born, and bumed—like Minnie.”
“Guess I can let you go, Hank. I’ll talk to your kid—scare him good—and let him go, too. But I think you may have to answer in court, someday soon—if Higgley’s collarbone is really broken—for this ‘lewd’ business.”
In alternations of rage and laughter, Henry told Beth. When he finished, like most excited persons, he went back to the beginning. ‘‘There I was, tooling along to CD headquarters to drill the rescue gang! Wham! There they came, sirens yowling. ‘Pull over!’ they hollered, and so help me God, when I got out, they had drawn their guns!”
He slapped his thigh and chortled.
His wife smiled, but not with his hilarity.
“It’s funny,” she said quietly, “but I don’t recall ever seeing Minnie.”
He shot her a quick glance, his smile gone. “Minnie’s an ugly sight,” he replied. “Kept her in that locked closet, with the others. Didn’t see any call to show you our chamber of horrors.”
“Why, Henry?”
“Well….”
“Isn’t that what they’re for?”
“Sure. I suppose, though—that is, I always figured, why upset Beth. She can stand what she has to. A lot of people passed out or puked the first time we used those things—and not all women, by any means.”
“I think I ought to look.”
Henry’s amusement, as well as his indignation, were gone, now. “Hell, Mom!” he protested.
She beckoned with her head.
They went to the garage. Henry switched on the light. He unlocked a closet. Inside, standing, leaning against the walls, were two figures of human beings-a man and a child—
horribly mutilated. Beth Conner touched the back of her hand to her mouth. She said, almost in a whisper, “All right, Hank. Shut the door.”
He followed her, around the Oldsmobile and into the yard, wondering what she was thinking. She whispered something finally, and he thought she said, “The beasts!” He guessed, presently, she had said that, referring to the Reds, maybe, or maybe to scientists, or maybe just to humanity at large. But when she faced him she was calm and she took his arm by its crook.
“Hank,” she murmured, “don’t you ever quit Civil Defense!”