“Hush!” She went on to Greenberg. “Look, Mr. Commissioner, you’ve said a fancy lot of words, but what do they mean? You are about to pass judgment on Lummox. . . and you won’t even bother to ask him a question. You say he can’t give competent evidence. Well, I’ve seen others around here who didn’t do so well. I’ll bet if you hook a truth meter to Lummie, it won’t buzz. Sure, he did things he shouldn’t have done. He ate some scrawny old rose bushes and he ate Mr. Ito’s cabbages. What’s horrible about that? When you were a kid, did you ever swipe a cookie when you thought nobody was looking?”
She took a deep breath. “Suppose when you swiped that cookie, somebody hit you in the face with a broom? Or fired a gun at you? Wouldn’t you be scared? Wouldn’t you run? Lummie is friendly. Everybody around here knows that. . . or at least if they don’t they are stupider and more irresponsible than he is. But did anybody try to reason with him? Oh, no! They bullied him and fired off guns at him and scared him to death and chased him off bridges. You say Lummie is incompetent. Who is incompetent? All these people who were mean to him? Or Lummie? Now they want to kill him. If a little boy swiped a cookie, I suppose they’d chop his head off, just to be sure he wouldn’t do it again. Is somebody crazy? What kind of a farce is this?”
She stopped, tears running down her cheeks. It was a talent which had been useful in school dramatics; to her own surprise she found that these tears were real.
“Are you through?” asked Greenberg.
“I guess so. For now, anyway?’
“I must say that you put it very movingly. But a court should not be swayed by emotion. Is it your theory that the major portion of the damage. . . let us say everything but the rose bushes and the cabbages. . . arose from improper acts of human beings and therefore cannot be charged to Lummox or his owner?”
“Figure it yourself, your honor. The tail generally follows the dog. Why not ask Lummie how it looked to him?”
“We’ll get to that. On another issue: I cannot grant that your analogy is valid. We are dealing here, not with a little boy, but with an animal. If this court should order the destruction of this animal, it would not be in spirit of vengeance nor of punishment, for an animal is presumed not to understand such values. The purpose would be preventive, in order that a potential danger might not be allowed to develop into damage to life or limb or property. Your little boy can be restrained by the arms of his nurse. . . but we are dealing with a creature weighing several tons, capable of crushing a man with a careless step. There is no parallel in your cookie-stealing small boy.”
“There isn’t, huh? That little boy can grow up and wipe out a whole city by pushing one teeny little button. So off with his head before he grows up. Don’t ask him why he took the cookie, don’t ask him anything! He’s a bad boy-chop his head off and save trouble.”
Greenberg found himself again biting his lip. He said, “It is your wish that we examine Lummox?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“I’m not sure what you said. The court will consider it.”
Mr. Lombard said quickly, “Objection, your honor. If this extraordinary. . .”
“Hold your objection, please. Court will recess for ten minutes. All will remain.” Greenberg got up and walked away. He took out a cigarette, found again that he had no light, stuck the pack back in his pocket.
Blast the girl! He had had it figured how to dispose of this case smoothly, with credit to the department and everybody satisfied. . . except the Stuart boy, but that could not be helped. . . the boy and this precocious preposterous young mammal who had him under her wing. And under her thumb, too, he added.
He could not allow this unique specimen to be destroyed. But he had meant to do it suavely. . . deny the petition of that old battle-axe, since it was obviously from malice, and tell the police chief privately to forget the other one. The Save-the-World-for-the-Neanderthals petition didn’t matter. But this cocky girl; by talking when she should have listened, was going to make it appear that a departmental court could be pushed into risking public welfare over a lot of sentimental, anthropomorphic bosh!