Atlanta Daily World

TOWN
by ELL
©1943 by LITTLE, BROWN

Five small boys with strapped books swinging over their shoulders spied Jim and began to troop after him. One of the boys had picked up a stone. He threw it, hard. Jim went down on his face.

Ellery began to run across the Square. By the time he reached the other side of the Square, Jim was surrounded by a crowd. The boys had vanished.

"Let me through, please!"

Jim was dazed. His hat had fallen off. Blood oozed from a dark stain on his sandy hair.

"Poisoner!" murmured fat woman.

"That's him-that's the poisoner!"

"Wife killer!"

"Why don't they arrest him?"

"What kind of law have we got in this town, anyway?"

"He ought to be strung up!"

A small dark man kicked Jim's hat. A woman with doughy cheeks jumped at Jim, screaming.

"Stop!" growled Ellery. He cuffed the small man aside, stepped between the woman and Haight, and said hastily: "Out of this. Jim. Come on!"

"What hit me?" asked Jim. His eyes were glassy. "My head-"

"Who's the other one?"

"Get him, too!"

Ellery found himself, absurdly, fighting with a group of blood-maddened savages who were dressed like ordinary people.

"Hit back. Jim!" he shouted. "Defend yourself!"

But Jim's hands remained at his sides. A rivulet of blood coursed down a cheek. He let himself be pushed, poked, punched, scratched, kicked.

Then a one-woman Panzer division struck the crowd from the direction of the curb. Ellery grinned painfully over a swollen lip.

"Attaboy, Patsy!" shouted a man from the edge of the crowd. "Break it up, folks-come on, that's no way to carry on!"

Pat burst through to the struggling men. At the same moment Buzz Congress, the bank's special policeman, ran out and hit the crowd with himself. Since Buzz weighed two-fifteen, it was a considerable blow: people squawked and scattered, and between them Ellery and Pat got Jim into the bank.

As the mob ebbed away, Ellery saw the big silent figure of Frank Lloyd near the curb.

There was a bitter twist to Lloyd's mouth. When he saw Ellery watching him, he grinned without mirth, as if to say: "Remember what I told you about this town?" and lumbered off across the Square.

Pat and Ellery drove Jim back to the little house on the Hill. They found Dr. Willoughby waiting for them-John F. had phoned him from the bank.

"Some nasty scratches," said Dr. Willoughby, "a few ugly bruises, and that's a deep scalp wound, but he'll be all right."

"How about Mr. Smith, Uncle Milo?" asked Pat anxiously.

"Now, now, I'm perfectly fine," protested Ellery.

But Dr. Willoughby fixed up Ellery, too. When the doctor had gone, Ellery undressed Jim, and Pat helped get him into bed. Jim soon fell asleep.

"He didn't say a word," whispered Pat. "Not one word."

"Well," said Ellery soberly, "He'd better stay away from town from now on."