Sure, Larry Connaught saved my
life--but it was how he did it
that forced me to murder him!
I am sitting on the edge of what passes for a bed. It is made of loosely
woven strips of steel, and there is no mattress, only an extra blanket
of thin olive-drab. It isn't comfortable; but of course they expect to
make me still more uncomfortable.
They expect to take me out of this precinct jail to the District prison
and eventually to the death house.
Sure, there will be a trial first, but that is only a formality. Not
only did they catch me with the smoking gun in my hand and Connaught
bubbling to death through the hole in his throat, but I admitted it.
I--knowing what I was doing, with, as they say, malice
aforethought--deliberately shot to death Laurence Connaught.
They execute murderers. So they mean to execute me.
Especially because Laurence Connaught had saved my life.
Well, there are extenuating circumstances. I do not think they would
convince a jury.
Connaught and I were close friends for years. We lost touch during the
war. We met again in Washington, a few years after the war was over. We
had, to some extent, grown apart; he had become a man with a mission.
He was working very hard on something and he did not choose to discuss
his work and there was nothing else in his life on which to form a basis
for communication. And--well, I had my own life, too. It wasn't
scientific research in my case--I flunked out of med school, while he
went on. I'm not ashamed of it; it is nothing to be ashamed of. I simply
was not able to cope with the messy business of carving corpses. I
didn't like it, I didn't want to do it, and when I was forced to do it,
I did it badly. So--I left.
Thus I have no string of degrees, but you don't need them in order to be
a Senate guard.
* * * * *
Does that sound like a terribly impressive career to you? Of course not;
but I liked it. The Senators are relaxed and friendly when the guards
are around, and you learn wonderful things about what goes on behind the
scenes of government. And a Senate guard is in a position to do
favors--for newspapermen, who find a lead to a story useful; for
government officials, who sometimes base a whole campaign on one
careless, repeated remark; and for just about anyone who would like to
be in the visitors' gallery during a hot debate.
Larry Connaught, for instance. I ran into him on the street one day, and
we chatted for a moment, and he asked if it was possible to get him in
to see the upcoming foreign relations debate. It was; I called him the
next day and told him I had arranged for a pass. And he was there,
watching eagerly with his moist little eyes, when the Secretary got up
to speak and there was that sudden unexpected yell, and the handful of
Central American fanatics dragged out their weapons and began trying to
change American policy with gunpowder.
You remember the story, I suppose. There were only three of them, two
with guns, one with a hand grenade. The pistol men managed to wound two
Senators and a guard. I was right there, talking to Connaught. I spotted
the little fellow with the hand grenade and tackled him. I knocked him
down, but the grenade went flying, pin pulled, seconds ticking away. I
lunged for it. Larry Connaught was ahead of me.
The newspaper stories made heroes out of both of us. They said it was
miraculous that Larry, who had fallen right on top of the grenade, had
managed to get it away from himself and so placed that when it exploded
no one was hurt.
For it did go off--and the flying steel touched nobody. The papers
mentioned that Larry had been knocked unconscious by the blast. He was
unconscious, all right.
He didn't come to for six hours and when he woke up, he spent the next
whole day in a stupor.