The Collection by Fredric Brown Page B

of the Jag went over and then the back wheels. The bumps were her, of course, and the crunches were the bicycle. And the car shuddered to a
stop maybe another thirty feet on.
    " Ahead of me, through the windshield, I
could see the lights of the precinct station only a block away. I got out of
the car and started running for it. I didn ' t look back. I didn ' t want to look back. There was no point to it; she had to be deader than
dead, after that impact.
    " I ran into the precinct house and after a
few seconds I got coherent enough to get across what I was trying to tell them.
Two of the city's finest left with me and we started back the block to the
scene of the accident. I started out by running, but they only walked fast and
I slowed myself down because I wasn ' t anxious to get there first.
Well, we got there and— "
    "Let me guess," the attorney said. "No girl,
no bicycle."
    Kane nodded slowly. "There was the Jag, slued crooked
in the street. Headlights on. Ignition key still on, but the engine had
stalled. Behind it, about forty feet of skid marks, starting a dozen feet back
of the point where the alley cut out into the street.
    " And that was all. No girl. No bicycle. Not
a drop of blood or a scrap of metal. Not a scratch or a dent in the front of
the car. They thought I was crazy and I don ' t blame them. They didn ' t
even trust me to get the car off the street; one of them did that and parked it
at the curb—and kept the key instead of handing it to me—and they took me back
to the station house and questioned me.
    "I was there the rest of the night. I suppose I could
have called a friend and had the friend get me an attorney to get me out on
bail, but I was just too shaken to think of it. Maybe even too shaken to want out, to have any idea where I'd want to go or what I'd want to do if I got
out. I just wanted to be alone to think and, after the questioning, a chance to
do that was just what I got. They didn't toss me into the drunk tank. Guess I
was well enough dressed, had enough impressive identification on me, to
convince them that, sane or nuts, I was a solid and solvent citizen, to be
handled with kid gloves and not rubber hose. Anyway, they had a single cell
open and put me in it and I was content to do my thinking there. I didn ' t
even try to sleep.
    " The next morning they had a police head
shrinker come in to talk to me. By that time I ' d simmered down to
the point where I realized that, whatever the score was, the police weren ' t
going to be any help to me and the sooner I got out of their hands the better.
So I conned the head shrinker a bit by starting to play my story down instead
of telling it straight. I left out sound effects, like the crunching of the
bicycle being run over and I left out kinetic sensations, feeling the impact
and the bumps, gave it to him as what could have been purely a sudden and
momentary visual hallucination. He bought it after a while, and they let
me go. "
    Kane stopped talking long enough to take a pull at the
silver flask and then asked, "With me so far? And, whether you believe me
or not, any questions to date?"
    "Just one," the attorney said. "Are you, can
you be, positive that your experience with the police at the Forty-fourth is
objective and verifiable? In other words, if this comes to a trial and we
should decide on an insanity defense, can I call as witnesses the policemen who
talked to you, and the police psychiatrist?"
    Kane grinned a little crookedly. " To me my
experience with the police is just as objective as my running over the girl on
the bicycle. But at least you can verify the former. See if it's on the blotter
and if they remember it. Dig? "
    " I'm hip. Carry on. "
    " So the police were satisfied that I'd had
an hallucination. I damn well wasn't. I did several things. I had a garage run
the Jag up on a rack and I went over the underside of it, as well as the front.
No sign. Okay, it hadn ' t happened, as far as the car was
concerned.
    " Second, I