She was beginning to look rather disheveled. Beaming at Chandler—surely the woman was rather odd, it couldn’t be just his imagination—she fumbled in her pocketbook for the slip of paper with the verdict. But she wore an expression of suppressed laughter.
“I knew I had it,” she cried triumphantly and waved the slip above her head. “Now, let’s see.” She held it before her eyes and squinted. “Oh, yes. Judge, we the jury, and so forth and so on—”
She paused to wink at Judge Ellithorp. An uncertain worried murmur welled up in the auditorium. “All that junk, Judge,” she explained, “anyway, we unanimously—but unanimously, love!—find this son of a bitch innocent. Why,” she giggled, “we think he ought to get a medal, you know? I tell you what you do, love, you go right over and give him a big wet kiss and say you’re sorry.” She kept on talking, but no one heard. The murmur became a mass scream.
“Stop, stop her!” bawled the judge, dropping his glasses. “Bailiff!”
The scream became a word, in many voices chorused: Possessed! And beyond doubt the woman was. The men around her hurled themselves away, as from leprosy among them, and then washed back like a lynch mob. She was giggling as they fell on her. “Got a cigarette? No cigarettes in this lousy bag—oh.” She screamed as they touched her, went limp and screamed again.
It was a different note this time, pure hysteria: “I couldn’t stop. Oh, God.”
Chandler caught his lawyer by the arm and jerked him away from staring at the scene. All of a sudden he was alive again. “You, damn it. Listen! The jury acquitted me, right?”
The lawyer was startled. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a clear case of—”
“Be a lawyer, man! You live on technicalities, don’t you? Make this one work for me!”
The attorney gave him a queer, thoughtful look, hesitated, shrugged and got to his feet. He had to shout to be heard. “Your honor! I take it my client is free to go.”
He made almost as much of a stir as the sobbing woman, but he outshouted the storm. “The jury’s verdict is on record. Granted there was an apparent case of possession. Nevertheless—”
Judge Ellithorp yelled back: “No nonsense, you! Listen to me, young man—”
The lawyer snapped, “Permission to approach the bench.”
“Granted.”
Chandler sat unable to move, watching the brief, stormy conference. It was painful to be coming back to life. It was agony to hope. At least, he thought detachedly, his lawyer was fighting for him; the prosecutor’s face was a thundercloud.
The lawyer came back, with the expression of a man who has won a victory he did not expect, and did not want. “Your last chance, Chandler. Change your plea to guilty.”
“But—”
“Don’t push your luck, boy! The judge has agreed to accept a plea. They’ll throw you out of town, of course. But you’ll be alive.” Chandler hesitated. “Make up your mind! The best I can do otherwise is a mistrial, and that means you’ll get convicted by another jury next week.”
Chandler said, testing his luck: “You’re sure they’ll keep their end of the bargain?”
The lawyer shook his head, his expression that of a man who smells something unpleasant. “Your honor! I ask you to discharge the jury. My client wishes to change his plea.”
… In the school’s chemistry lab, an hour later, Chandler discovered that the lawyer had left out one little detail. Outside there was a sound of motors idling, the police car that would dump him at the town’s limits; inside was a thin, hollow hiss. It was the sound of a Bunsen burner, and in its blue flame a crudely shaped iron changed slowly from cherry to orange to glowing straw. It had the shape of a letter h.
“H” for “hoaxer.” The mark they were about to put on his forehead would be with him wherever he went and as long as he lived, which would probably not be long. “H” for “hoaxer,” so that a glance would show that he had been convicted of the worst offense of all.
No one spoke to him as the sheriff’s man took the iron out of the fire, but three husky policemen held his arms while he screamed.
III
The pain was still burning when Chandler awoke the next day. He wished he had a bandage, but he didn’t, and that was that.
He was in a freight car—had hopped it on the run at the yards, daring to sneak back into town long enough for that. He could not hope to hitchhike, with that mark on him. Anyway, hitchhiking was an invitation to trouble.
The railroads were safer—far safer than either cars or air transport, notoriously a lightning-rod attracting possession. Chandler was surprised when the train came crashing to a stop, each freight car smashing against the couplings of the one ahead, the engine jolting forward and stopping again.
Then there was silence. It endured.
Chandler, who had been slowly waking after a night of very little sleep, sat up against the wall of the boxcar and wondered what was wrong.
It seemed remiss to start a day without signing the Cross or hearing a few exorcismal verses. It seemed to be mid-morning, time for work to be beginning at the plant. The lab men would be streaming in, their amulets examined at the door. The chaplains would be wandering about, ready to pray a possessing spirit out. Chandler, who kept an open mind, had considerable doubt of the effectiveness of all the amulets and spells—certainly they had not kept him from a brutal rape—but he felt uneasy without them. … The train still was not moving. In the silence he could hear
