"No, sir. Except for one of them. You see, I was supposed to keep
people away, tell them to go around the other way. And these kids came
along. I told them to go around the other way, but they said they had
to get to the subway."
"The subway?" echoed Stevenson.
"Yes, sir. They said they were out too late anyway and it was a long
way to go to get home."
The man named Marshall said, "You said one of them _did_ go down by the
schoolyard?"
"Yes, sir. I told them all to go around the other way and the one kid
said, 'Hey, they're fighting,' or something like that, and he ran down
the street. I tried to stop him. But he got away from me."
"And then what happened?" asked Stevenson.
"Then I saw the fuzz--the police coming. I ran down to warn everybody.
And all the guys were jumping around throwing their coats away."
"And the little boy?"
"I didn't see him at all any more. Except after the police came. I saw
him go running around the corner."
"What did this boy look like?" Stevenson asked.
"Gee, I don't know, sir."
"You don't know?"
"No, sir. He was in his Hallowe'en costume."
The four men looked at one another. "A costume," said the one named
Roberts, the reporter. "My God, a _costume_."
"Yes, sir," said Judy. "It was all black and gold. Tight black pants
and a yellow shirt and a black cape and a funny kind of mask that
covered his face, black and gold. And a kind of cap like maybe a skull
cap on his head, black, only it was knit. Like the sailors wear in the
Merchant Marine."
"Black and gold," said Roberts. He seemed awed by something.
"So you can't identify this boy at all," said Stevenson forlornly.
"One of the other kids called him Eddie," she said, suddenly
remembering.
They spent fifteen minutes more with her, going over the same ground
again and again, but she just didn't have any more to tell them. And
finally they let her go.
* * * * *
Mr. Featherhall and Miss English were distant but courteous. It was,
after all, banking hours. On the other hand, these four men were police
and FBI, on official business.
"It _has_ been a rather long time," Featherhall objected gently. "Well
over four months."
"It seemed to me," said Miss English, "that the police took the names
of all the people who'd been here at the time of the robbery."
"There may have been other people present," suggested Marshall, "who
left before the confusion was over. There are any number of people in
this world who like to avoid being involved in things like this."
"I can certainly appreciate their position," said Miss English,
reminiscently touching her fingertips to her head.
"Miss English was very brave," Featherhall told the policemen. "She
created the diversion that spoiled their plans."
"Yes, we know," said Marshall. "We've heard about what you did, Miss
English."
"To tell you the truth," she said primly, "I was most concerned about
the boy. To be exposed to something like that at his tender--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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