Across the room a portly gentleman with a white mane and great shaggy black eyebrows looked up from a sheaf of papers on the desk before him.
"Them?" he said. "I told you just to pick up Pillsworth and finish him off."
The swarthy man glanced away, embarrassed. "I couldn't finish him off, congressman. He wasn't even started. I went to the hospital, like you told me, to make sure about Pillsworth—and I was going along the hall lookin' for this place where they cut 'em up—and all of a sudden there was a racket like a lot of people runnin' around and yellin', so I ducked into this closet to keep under cover. Well, I was only in there a little bit when all of a sudden somebody yanks the door open and this guy and this dame come shaggin' in with hardly any clothes on. So I kept quiet and listened."
"I'm not interested in the sordid doings behind the scenes at the hospital," Congressman Entwerp interrupted. "Stick to the pertinent facts."
"Oh, no, it wasn't nothin' like that. I just listened and pretty soon it come up in what they were sayin' that this guy with the dame is none other than Pillsworth himself. And believe me, congressman, I can't explain it, but there ain't a thing wrong with him—physically."
"Physically?" the congressman asked. "What do you mean?"
"The guy's mentally a mess," the thug said. "So's this dame with him. She's a terrific lookin' little job, but crazy as a coot. It's a dirty shame."
"How do you know they're crazy?"
"Just ask Hank. He drove the car. All the way over from the hospital they kept talkin' to this guy who wasn't there, and bawlin' him out for followin' them everyplace. They called him George, and they carried on a regular conversation with him. It was weird, leave me tell you. But one thing, this guy George, whoever he is, is lucky he doesn't exist; the way that little dame kept tellin' him what she was going to do to him if he didn't show himself and help them out of this jam was enough to curl your hair. Pillsworth was all the time tellin' this imaginary character what a ghoul he was to be hangin' around just to see him get killed. They're both nuts, boss, an' no lie!"
"Maybe it was just an act," Congressman Entwerp suggested skeptically.