Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/287

 with robbery; then he'd run to shooting of old Win Scofield and, from that, to his attempt at the simultaneous gassing of the group appointed to gather in the Sencort directors' room. Keeban had tried to carry Doris with him from counterfeiting into killing; he had failed. He must have been carrying some, or most, of these normals with him from smaller offenses into those which threatened "the chair."

He could not simply have happened upon a group of normals going the exact gait he was going; he had to speed up some of them and keep them with him and impress them with the certainty of something worse than "the chair", if any failed him. So he was giving "the glass room" to Doris and me, not merely for our punishment, but for an example to the others. And more of the others were arriving now. I heard footsteps and voices, a girl's voice among them and her laugh. I turned about. Shirley, Win Scofield's widow, had come with two young men beside her.

The sight of her brought me images of recollection. How I had seen her sing in her house that night before the shooting! How, like a cabaret Récamier, she had received me after her husband was dead! How I witnessed her dance