"Oh, the one who thought the magistrate was a beautiful girl? It's hard to believe, of course, but you must remember it was an extreme case. The most severe ever recorded, I believe. The funeral was only a formality, of course, since there wasn't even a scrap of him recovered. Exploded, you know."
"Exploded!"
"That's right. The only thing of its kind in medical history. Poor devil went right off. With a great whopping roar, they said. The doctors said it was caused by repressed emotion."
"Oh, Mona!" the congressman groaned.
"Didn't mean to upset you, old friend," Toffee said. "It's an unpleasant thing to talk about."
"But couldn't they have saved him?" the congressman asked. "Suppose they had gotten him to a psychiatrist or something before it happened?"
"Actually it was much simpler than that," Toffee said ponderously. "The fellow could have saved himself merely by confessing. Confession, you know, is the only thing for a bad conscience. Highly recommended by all the best authorities. Those church people are doing it all the time—can't stop church people from confessing—and you never heard of one of them exploding, did you?"
"That's right," the congressman said hopefully. His gaze travelled out the window, a clouded look of inner turmoil on his face.
"It was just one of those things," Toffee put in. "One minute this chap was standing there in court just as hail and hearty as beans and the next—boom!—and the spectators were whisking him off their coat sleeves and passing round the cleaning fluid!"
The congressman whirled about in a convulsion of anguish. "I confess!" he blurted. "I confess everything!"