People Will Talk Page #11

I refuse to answer that question.

You have always evidenced a remarkable

tolerance for this strange and mysterious man.

His qualifications

have been questioned.

His blundering and slow-wittedness

have caused complaint...

and yet you have protected him at all times

to the fullest extent of your authority.

His qualifications concern

no one but me...

since his responsibility

is to no one but me.

As to his so-called blundering

and so-called slow-wittedness...

perhaps I overlook them

because I know the reason for them.

And is the reason of so delicate a nature

that you cannot divulge it even here?

I have no right

to divulge it anywhere.

May I suggest to you then,

Dr. Praetorius...

that your refusal to divulge it

is not out of loyalty to Mr. Shunderson...

but is due to some unsavory

and dishonorable coercion upon you...

because the reason, which has been

so delicately characterized here...

has to do simply with Mr. Shunderson

having been a convicted murderer!

What are you doing here?

I was listening

through the door.

I protest against this

highly irregular, unethical...

and probably prearranged

eavesdropping.

Elwell, you can use more words

more unpleasantly...

than any irritating little

pip-squeak I've ever known.

Gentlemen, I suggest

we leave the saloon floor...

and return to a more

academic level of behavior.

I want to tell my story.

He'll never tell it.

But what you want to know about me

has nothing to do with him.

Well, let's hear it,

by all means.

- Okay?

- Certainly, Mr. Shunderson.

Okay?

I'm not a fancy talker.

I... I don't know a lot of words.

That alone is a welcome relief.

Well, now, I...

Don't start with

"Well, now".

Where... Where should I begin?

Tell them when you were

condemned to death for murder.

- The first time?

- Of course.

Well, the first time

was in Canada...

in 1917.

It was Christmas.

It wasn't a very merry Christmas.

Don't editorialize.

Just tell the facts.

I had a sweetheart and a friend.

We were very close, the three of us.

We went everywhere together.

Well, this one time

we went mountain climbing.

My sweetheart couldn't

climb very high...

so she stayed behind at a hotel

while my friend and I went on.

We didn't get very far

before we started to argue.

I don't remember what about.

We always argued...

as friends do.

But this time

he hit me with a rock.

So I hit him with one.

Not too much detail.

Anyway, we had a bloody fight...

and he ran away.

So, I went back to my sweetheart.

She was waiting

in the lobby of the hotel.

She didn't even say hello.

She took one look at the blood on my clothes...

and saw that I was alone...

and started to scream,

"Murderer, murderer!"

That was how I found out

that my sweetheart...

and my friend

were sweethearts.

Who saw to it that you were arrested

and charged with murder?

Oh, my sweetheart, of course.

Her testimony and the blood

on my clothes were enough.

I was found guilty

of murdering my friend...

and I was condemned to death.

But because nobody could produce

the corpse of my friend, living or dead...

my sentence was commuted

to 15 years at hard labor.

And was the corpse

of your friend never found?

I found it myself,

after I served out...

my full 15 years at hard labor.

I found it accidentally.

I was walking past

a restaurant in Toronto.

I happened to look in the window

and there was the corpse of my friend...

sitting at a table

eating a bowl of soup.

I think it was pea soup.

Immaterial and irrelevant.

Well, I... I went in

and spoke to my friend...

in a very friendly fashion.

I asked him very nicely where

he had been for 15 years...

and why he never admitted

that I didn't kill him.

His answer, gentlemen,

was unsatisfactory.

So I hit him in the face

with the bowl of soup.

Then I hit him with a chair.

Somebody called a policeman.

The policeman had a club.

I took the club away from him.

And it was with the policeman's club

I finished up on my friend.

I tried to explain to the policeman...

that if I was committing a crime...

it was a crime for which

I had already paid the penalty.

- He arrested me anyway.

- You were released, of course.

No. I was tried for his murder again

and sentenced to death again.

But how could you be tried twice

for the murder of the same man?

The prosecutor insisted

that this was not the same murder.

The first time no dead body

was produced as evidence.

Well, the prosecutor

was very fair about it.

He was willing to admit that

my first conviction was probably

a miscarriage of justice.

But even though the first jury

made a mistake...

he said I didn't have

the right to commit a murder...

just to correct that mistake.

He demanded the death penalty,

and I was condemned to death.

But this time you were pardoned.

No. This time they didn't

even commute my sentence.

You see, the fact that I killed my friend...

with a policeman's club

made it a very serious crime.

Then will you tell us, Mr. Shunderson,

how did you manage to escape?

- I didn't escape.

- Well, what happened to get you out of it?

Nothing. I was executed.

- Executed?

- This is absurd.

It was on the morning

of the 29th of February...

1932...

a leap year.

It was a gray and rainy morning.

The hangman put the noose

around my neck.

Then we had to wait

because some official forgot his glasses.

They held an umbrella over me

so I wouldn't get wet.

And then the official's glasses came.

He read something,

a minister prayed...

I closed my eyes

and thought of my mother...

the floor went out

from under me and that was that.

I must protest against this fantastic...

and childish assault

upon our intelligence.

You be quiet!

- Then what happened?

- The next thing I felt...

was a finger

with a rubber glove on it.

It was in my mouth

pressing down on my tongue.

I bit it and somebody yelled.

I opened my eyes and...

that was the first time

I saw Dr. Praetorius.

Only he wasn't a doctor then.

Just a medical student.

I think I can make

this next part of the story clear to you.

At the time all this happened, I was just

finishing my studies as a medical student.

I was also keeping company,

as they say...

with a young lady who happened to be

the hangman's daughter.

Both the hangman and his daughter

were generous and sympathetic.

The hangman in particular

was sympathetic to my desire...

as a student of anatomy

to have a cadaver of my own.

Knowing that Mr. Shunderson's

body would go unclaimed...

because certainly no one was ever more alone

in this world than poor Mr. Shunderson was...

the hangman managed to send it to me

immediately after the hanging...

along with a sweet note

from his daughter.

I was delighted,

of course.

But not for long. I soon found out

that Mr. Shunderson was still alive.

You must have been furious.

He told me his story.

We put some pig iron in the cheap

wooden coffin that he'd arrived in...

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