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By Root 374 0

was a fictional hero popular among adolescent readers of pulp magazines a generation ago. "If you boys remember, Doc Savage was a kind of superman. He'd made himself proficient in every field - medicine, science, philosophy, art. There wasn't much old Doc didn't know or couldn't do. One of his projects was, he decided to rid the world of criminals. First he bought a big island out in the ocean. Then he and his assistants - he had an army of trained assistants - kidnapped all the world's criminals and brought them to the island. And Doc Savage operated on their brains. He removed the part that holds wicked thoughts. And when they recovered they were all decent citizens. They couldn't commit crimes because that part of their brain was out. Now it strikes me that surgery of this nature might really be the answer to - " A bell, the signal that the jury was returning, interrupted him. The jury's deliberations had lasted forty minutes. Many spectators, anticipating a swift decision, had never left their seats. Judge Tate, however, had to be fetched from his farm, where he had gone to feed his horses. A hurriedly donned black robe billowed about him when at last he arrived, but it was with impressive sedateness and dignity that he asked, "Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached your verdicts?" Their foreman replied: "We have, Your Honor." The court bailiff carried the sealed verdicts to the bench. Train whistles, the fanfare of an approaching Santa Fe express, penetrated the courtroom. Tale's bass voice interlaced with the locomotive's cries as he read: " 'Count One. We the jury find the defendant, Richard Eugene Hickock, guilty of murder in the first degree, and the punishment is death.' " Then, as though interested in their reaction, he looked down upon the prisoners, who stood before him handcuffed to guards; they stared back impassively until he resumed and read the seven counts that followed: three more convictions for Hickock, and four for Smith.

" - and the punishment is death"; each time he came to the sentence, Tate enunciated it with a dark-toned hollowness that seemed to echo the train's mournful, now fading call. Then he dismissed the jury ("You have performed a courageous service"),and the condemned men were led away. At the door, Smith said to Hickock, "No chicken-hearted jurors, they!" They both laughed loudly, and a cameraman photographed them. The picture appeared in a Kansas paper above a caption entitled: "The Last Laugh?"

A week later Mrs. Meier was sitting in her parlor talking to a friend. "Yes, it's turned quiet around here," she said. "I guess we ought to be grateful things have settled down. But I still feel bad about it. I never had much truck with Dick, but Perry and I got to know each other real well. That afternoon, after he heard the verdict and they brought him back up here - I shut myself in the kitchen to keep from having to see him. I sat by the kitchen window and watched the crowd leaving the courthouse. Mr. Cullivan - he looked up and saw me and waved. The Hickocks. All going away. Just this morning I had a lovely letter from Mrs. Hickock; she visited with me several times while the trial was going on, and I wished I could have helped her, only what can you say to someone in a situation like that? But after everybody had gone, and I'd started to wash some dishes - I heard him crying. I turned on the radio. Not to hear him. But I could. Crying like a child. He'd never broke down before, shown any sign of it. Well, I went to him. The door of his cell. He reached out his hand. He wanted me to hold his hand, and I did, I held his hand, and all he said was, 'I'm embraced by shame.' I wanted to send for Father Goubeaux - I said first thing tomorrow I'd make him Spanish rice - but he just held my hand tighter.

"And that night, of all nights, we had to leave him alone. Wendle and I almost never go out, but we had a long-standing engagement, and Wendle didn't think we ought to break it. But I'll always be sorry we left him alone. Next day I did fix the rice. He wouldn't touch it. Or hardly speak to