leaped up, crying, “You three scoundrels were not invited here! You pushed your way in! Get out! Go! Get out!”
One of the accompanying dogs demanded of Macgoblin, “Going to stand for these two Yiddles insulting us — insulting the whole by God Corpo state and the M.M. uniform? Kill ’em!”
Now, to his already abundant priming, Macgoblin had added two huge whiskies since he had come. He yanked out his automatic pistol, fired twice. Dr. Schmidt toppled. Rabbi De Verez slid down in his chair, his temple throbbing out blood. The houseman trembled at the door, and one of the guards shot at him, then chased him down the street, firing, and whooping with the humor of the joke. This learned guard was killed instantly, at a street crossing, by a traffic policeman.
Macgoblin and the other guard were arrested and brought before the Commissioner of the Metropolitan District, the great Corpo viceroy, whose power was that of three or four state governors put together.
Dr. de Verez, though he was not yet dead, was too sunken to testify. But the Commissioner thought that in a case so closely touching the federal government, it would not be seemly to postpone the trial.
Against the terrified evidence of the Rabbi’s Russian–Polish houseman were the earnest (and by now sober) accounts of the federal Secretary of Education, and of his surviving aide, formerly Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Pelouse University. It was proven that not only De Verez but also Dr. Schmidt was a Jew — which, incidentally, he 100 per cent was not. It was almost proven that this sinister pair had been coaxing innocent Corpos into De Verez’s house and performing upon them what a scared
