Fear is the Key

"They didn't jump you," Judge Mollison was saying patiently. "They were looking for a prisoner who had escaped from the nearby camp of one of our state convict road forces. Marble Springs is a small town and strangers easily identifiable. You are a stranger. It was natural-"

"Natural!" I interruped. "Look, Judge, I've been talking to the gaoler. He says the convict escaped at six o'clock in the afternoon. The Lone Ranger here picks me up at eight. Was I supposed to have escaped, sawed off my irons, had a bath, shampoo, manicure and shave, had a tailor measure and fit a suit for me, bought underclothes, shirt and shoes-"

"Such things have happened before," the judge interrupted. "A desperate man, with a gun or club-"

" — and grown my hair three inches longer all in the space of two hours?" I finished.

"It was dark in there, Judge-" the sheriff began, but

Moilison waved him to silence.

"You objected to being questioned and searched. Why?"

"As I said I was minding my own business. I was in a respectable restaurant, giving offence to no one. And where I come from a man doesn't require a state permit to enable him to breathe and walk around."

"He doesn't here either," the judge said patiently. "All they wanted was a driver's licence, insurance card, social-security card, old letters, any means of identification. You could have complied with their request."

"I was willing to."

"Then why this?" The judge nodded down at the sheriff. I followed his glance. Even when I'd first seen him in the La Contessa the sheriff had struck me as being something less than good-looking and I had to admit that the large plasters on his forehead and across the chin and the comer of the mouth did nothing to improve him.

"What else do you expect?" I shrugged. "When big boys start playing games little boys should stay home with Mother." The sheriff was half-way out of his seat, eyes narrowed and ivory-knuckled fists gripping the cane arms of his chair, but the judge waved him back impatiently. "The two gorillas he had with him started roughing me up. It was self-defence."

"If they assaulted you," the judge asked acidly, "how do you account for the fact that one of the officers is still in hospital with damaged knee ligaments and the other has a fractured cheekbone, while you are still unmarked?"

"Out of training, Judge. The state of Florida should spend more money on teaching its law officers to look after themselves. Maybe if they ate fewer hamburgers and drank less beer-"

"Be silent!" There was a brief interval while the judge seemed to be regaining control of himself, and I looked round the court again. The schoolgirls were still goggle-eyed, this beat anything they'd ever had in their civics classes before: the dark-blonde in the front seat was looking at me with a curious half-puzzled expression on her face, as if she were trying to work out something: behind her, his gaze lost in infinity, the man with the broken nose chewed on the stump of a dead cigar with machine-like regularity: the court reporter seemed asleep: the attendant at the door surveyed the scene with an Olympian detachment: beyond him, through the open door, I could see the harsh glare of the late afternoon sun on the dusty white street and beyond that again, glimpsed through a straggling grove of palmettos, the twinkling ripple of sunlight reflecting off the green water of the Gulf of Mexico… The judge seemed to have recovered his composure.

"We have established," he said heavily, "that you are truculent, intransigent, insolent and a man of violence. You also carry a gun — a small-bore Liliiput, I believe it is called. I could already commit you for contempt of court, for assaulting and obstructing constables of the law in the course of the performance of their duties and for being in illegal possession of a lethal weapon. But I won't." He paused for a moment, then went on: "We will have much more serious charges to prefer against you."

The court reporter opened one eye for a moment, thought better of it and appeared to go to sleep again. The man with the broken nose removed his cigar, examined it, replaced it and resumed his methodical champing. I said nothing.

"Where were you before you came here?" the judge asked abruptly.

"St. Catherine."

"I didn't mean that, but — well, how did you arrive here from St. Catherine?"

"By car."

"Describe it — and the driver."

"Green saloon — sedan, you'd call it. Middle-aged businessman and his wife. He was grey, she was blonde."

"That's all you can remember?" Mollison asked politely.

"That's all."

"I suppose you realise that description would fit a million couples and their cars?"

"You know how it is," I shrugged. "When you're not expecting to be questioned on what you've seen you don't bother-"

"Quite, quite." He could be very acid, this judge. "Out of state car, of course?"

"Yes. But not of course."

"Newly arrived in our country and already you know how to identify licence plates of-"

"He said he came from Philadelphia. I believe that's out of state."