The Vengeful Virgin

what it had been coming to. Even when I went and took this beautiful gamble. It was simple. Some can make it, others can’t. It was that simple.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk.

I waited.

They finally came across the porch. The door was open. They looked in and saw us lying there. They thought I was dead, too, at first.

An officer of the State Highway Patrol came in. I saw Doctor Miraglia out on the porch. Then a woman screamed, and ran into the room.

“Get her out!” somebody said.

It was Grace. She screamed again, and stood there looking down at me.

They led her back out again, fighting with her every inch of the way.

“Well, Ruxton,” Miraglia said. “It’s all over, isn’t it?”

I just looked at him.

I couldn’t figure what they were trying to prove. They all knew what had happened. I even told them the whole story, from the beginning. There was no use holding out. But they kept insisting there must be a trial. It seemed so damned stupid.

They kept me in the hospital, under guard.

Grace came to see me. Don’t misunderstand. She didn’t come to visit me. She came to see me—to stare at me.

She would get a chair and just sit there, staring at me, until they asked her to leave. Every day she did that.

“I’ll be there at the end, too, Jack.”

She said that every day. She was very nice, because they wouldn’t let her stay otherwise. There was nothing I could do.

Yes, that’s how it was. Grace, she was always burning. Then Shirley and I began burning. And then the money burned. And now there was time to burn.

Then, after there was no more time, they would burn me.

Don’t Let the Mystery End Here.

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