“Isn't this wound healed?”
“Practically.”
“Did you ever know any person to go crazy or get crazier from joy?”
“No.”
“There are your two patients disposed of, on the medical side. What I am attempting is an experiment in psychology. You've all had your chance at saving the Rat's soul. I'll have mine.”
She perched herself upon a modeling stool and expounded. The Rat, she explained, had never had an opportunity to do anything but harm in his life. Therefore he did harm with pride, because it was doing something. “He's like all of us; he wants to work to some effect. Give him a chance to make himself effective for good, and you may see a change.”
Upon which theory of vice and virtue the Little Red Doctor commented:—
“Sometimes the Bonnie Lassie thinks around queer corners with her mind, but she's got the wisest heart in Our Square.” So Pinney the Rat got his instructions and reluctant leave from his doctor to indulge in a brief midnight stroll that very night.
Our Square was haunted that midnight by uneasy figures slinking about in shadowy backgrounds. One by one Terry the Cop trailed them down only to be discomfited by successive discoveries of his own particular friends. The one logical object of suspicion, Pinney the Rat, sat openly on a bench and smoked and waited for Orpheus to finish his music. When it was over, the little guttersnipe went to meet the big Olympian. Carefully indeed had we rehearsed the Rat in a modulated method of breaking the news. But the gangster was an undisciplined soul and a direct. At the crisis he reverted to his own way, which perhaps was best. He put a hand on Orpheus's shoulder.
“Say, bo',” he said, “yer in wrong about the lady.”