Free Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 by The Hairy Ones Shall Dance (v1.1)

are looking after Susan
Gird and your friend, the Hen Doktor."
                   I had finished shaving. "How is Doctor
Zoberg?" I inquired through the towel.
                   "Still pretty badly
shaken up. I tried to get in and see him, but it was impossible. I
understand he went out for a while, early in the evening, but almost collapsed.
Just now he is completely surrounded by cooing old ladies with soup and herb
tea. Miss Gird was feeling much better, and talked to me for a while. I'm not
really on warm terms with the town, you know; people think it's indecent for me
to live out here alone and not give them a chance to gossip about me. So I was
pleasurably suqjrised to get a kind word from Miss Susan. She told me, very
softly for fear someone might overhear, that she hopes you aren't caught. She
is sure that you did not kill her father."
                   We went into his dining room, where William
offered pancakes, fried bacon and the strongest black coffee I ever tasted. In
the midst of it all, I put down my fork and faced the judge suddenly. He
grinned above his cup.
                   "Well, Mr Wills ? ' Stung
by the splendor of a sudden thought' -all you need is a sensitive hand clasped
to your inspired brow."
                   "You said," I reminded him,
"that Susan Gird is sure that I didn't kill her father."
                   "So I did."
                   "She told you that herself. She also
seemed calm, self-contained, instead of in mourning for -
"
                   "Oh, come, come!" He paused to shift
a full half-dozen cakes to his plate and skilfully drenched them with syrup.
"That's rather ungrateful of you, Mr Wills, suspecting her of patricide."
                   "Did I say that?" I protested,
feeling my ears turning bright red.
                   "You would have if I hadn't broken your
sentence in the middle," he accused, and put a generous portion of pancake
into his mouth. As he chewed he twinkled at me through his pince-nez, and I
felt unaccountably foolish.
                   "If Susan Gird had truly killed her
father," he resumed, after swallowing, "she would be more adroitly
theatrical. She would weep, swear vengeance on his murderer, and be glad to
hear that someone else had been accused of the crime. She would even invent
details to help incriminate that someone else."
                   "Perhaps she doesn't know that she killed
him," I offered.
                   "Perhaps not. You mean that a new mind, as well as a new body, may invest the werewolf- or
ectoplasmic medium - at time of change."
                   I jerked my head in agreement.
                   "Then Susan Gird, as she is normally,
must be innocent. Come, Mr Wills! Would you blame poor old Doctor Jekyll for
the crimes of his alter ego, Mr Hyde?"
                   "I wouldn't want to live in the same
house with Doctor Jekyll."
                   Judge Pursuivant burst into a roar of
laughter, at which WilHam, bringing fresh supplies from the kitchen, almost
dropped his tray. "So romance enters the field of psychic research!"
the judge crowed at me.
                   I stiffened, outraged. "Judge Pursuivant,
I certainly did not - "
                   "I know, you didn't say it, but again I
anticipated you. So it's not the thought of her possible unconscious crime, but
the chance of comfortable companionship that perplexes you." He stopped laughing
suddenly. "I'm sorry. Wills. Forgive me. I
shouldn't laugh at this, or indeed at any aspect of the whole very serious
business."
                   I could hardly take real offense at the man
who had rescued and sheltered me, and I said so. We finished breakfast, and he
sought his overcoat and wide hat.
                   "I'm off for town again," he
announced. "There are one or two points to be