“In a sane person much of the body’s energy is taken up by the inhibitory processes. The sane man hesitates, ponders, makes a decision, and perhaps changes it. His whole being is not behind the deeds he does. If a man goes swimming immediately after eating the conviction that he should have waited for half an hour will tug at him, will help to dissipate the energy that would ordinarily be going into his stroke. But to the manic tearing at his clothes, what he is doing is right, is the only thing to do, in fact. No inhibitions are dissipating his strength. He becomes, temporarily, a physical superman.”
The room suddenly lit up as if a sun had fallen through the roof. The thunder tore the air and left a hole of silence.
In the next cottage Mary Little raised her head from the pillow and cried: “Jennie! Wake up, Jennie! Something’s been hit!”
Jennie opened her eyes and mumbled a reply. Her head was sunk on her breast.
“Go downstairs and get Tom. I’m nervous. Wake up, Jennie!”
Jennie got up and tottered into the hall, yawning. She came back in a minute, fully awake now and frightened.
“Mr. Little isn’t here,” she cried.
“He must be here! He couldn’t be out in this storm.” Mary reached for her water glass. “He must be here.” Her fingers were shaking and the water dribbled down her chin and the glass fell from her hands.
The army of clouds scattered across the sky in retreat, their ammunition spent. At midnight a star appeared, impaled on a sliver of moon, and still Tom Little did not come home.
At ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, August the third, a young woman in Toronto was telephoning a wireless message to Dr. Prescott, Clayton, Muskoka.
In Flint, Michigan, the chief of police was composing a telegram to Inspector White.
Dr. Hartford, superintendent of the Mercy Sanctuary in Chicago, replaced in the files the case history he had been studying, read once more the telegram from Dr. Prye, and took up a pen.
Dr. Hartford could afford to be more verbose than the others. He added “Collect” at the bottom of the telegram form.
In cottage number four Susan Frost was packing a picnic basket. Not, of course, for a picnic, with Joan barely cold in her grave. Susan liked to think of Joan in a quiet coffin, looking serene and saved, rather than on the autopsy table in Dr. Prescott’s office.
The wild-strawberry jam, the calves’ foot jelly, and the invalid soup were going to Mary Little. The whole community knew that Tom had run away and that poor Mary was very ill. Susan hummed a little song, whisked a snowy napkin over the basket, and went out.
