The Glass Village by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

opinions. For the poor man as for the rich. For the man with the furrin-sounding name as for the Cabots and the Lodges. For the Catholic as for the Protestant and the Jew as for the Catholic. For the black as for the white. These aren’t mere words, neighbors, pretty sayings to hang on your parlor walls. They’re the only armor between you and the loss of your liberties. Let one man be deprived of his liberty, or his property, or his life without due process of law, and the liberty and property and lives of all of us are in danger. Tell your Congressmen and your Senators that. Make yourselves heard … while there’s still time!”
    When “The Star-Spangled Banner” had been sung, and Peter Berry had hurried ahead to reopen his store, and the children had whooped after him to buy cap pistols and bubble gum, and their elders dispersed in groups talking weather and crops and prices, Johnny took the old man’s arm and walked him around the Shinn house and into the woods beyond.
    â€œI thought that was a fine speech, Judge,” said Johnny, “as speeches go.”
    Judge Shinn stopped and looked at him. “What did I say, Johnny, that you don’t believe?”
    â€œOh, I believe . I believe it all.” Johnny shrugged. “But what can I do about it? Have a cigaret?”
    The Judge shook his head irritably. ‘When a man with paralysis of the vocal chords talks to people who are stone deaf, the net result is a thundering silence. Let’s walk.”
    They walked through the Judge’s woods for a long time. Finally the Judge stopped and sat down on a fallen tree. He mopped his face, and swatted at the gnats, and he said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.”
    â€œIt’s the Yankee conscience,” smiled Johnny, “rebelling at a display of honest emotion.”
    â€œI don’t mean that. ” The Judge paused, as if groping for the right words. “All day I’ve had the funniest feeling.”
    â€œFeeling?”
    â€œWell, it’s like waking up on one of those deathly still, high-humidity days. When the air weighs a ton and you can’t breathe.”
    â€œSeen a doctor lately?” asked Johnny lightly.
    â€œLast week,” growled the old man. “He says I’ll live to be a hundred.”
    Johnny was silent. Then he said, “It’s tied up with Shinn Corners, of course. You don’t get down here much any more, you said. It doesn’t surprise me. This place is pretty grim.”
    â€œDo you believe in premonitions, Johnny?” asked Judge Shinn suddenly.
    Johnny said, “Sure do.”
    The Judge shook himself a little.
    He got up from the log and reached for his handkerchief again. “I promised Mathilda Scott I’d bring you over to meet Earl. Lord, it’s hot!”
    The next day Aunt Fanny Adams was murdered.

Two …
    He was plastered against the flimsy wall with his eye to the hole in the freezing dark righting off the stench from the alley and saying don’t don’t don’t he’s only a kid from Oklahoma who ought to be kissing his date in a jalopy under a willow by some moonlit river but they went on jamming lighted cigarets against his nipples and other places and telling him to say what he’d dropped from his plane on their people’s villages and the hole in the wall got bigger and bigger and bigger until the hole was the whole room and he was the kid flyer twisting and jerking like a trout on a line to get away from the little probing fires the fires the fires …
    Johnny opened his eyes.
    He was in a sweat and the room was black.
    â€œWho is it?” he said.
    â€œMe,” said the Judge’s voice. The old man’s finger was poking holes in him. “For a restless sleeper you’re sure hard to wake up. Get up, Johnny!”
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    â€œAlmost five. That’s a three-mile walk to the pond,