A Quiet Afternoon

Lake Mahopac, N.Y. (pop. 1,000) is as quiet and peaceful a town as could be found in a month of fine summer days. It has big trees, sunlit lawns and white houses, which often stand with open doors in warm weather. One of the white houses on a street called Bullet Hole Road is owned by a hardware merchant named Marvin Arnold, and late one afternoon last week, a balding, chunky fellow walked casually to its front entrance.

He was Donald Snyder, 25, automobile thief and jailbird. The day before, he had escaped from the New York prison at Stormville, N.Y., twelve miles away, and he had been walking and hiding since. He did not look particularly dangerous, even as he said: "I am an escaped convict. The cops are after me. Let me in or I'll take your children."

The Knife. Mrs. Dorothy Arnold flipped the lock on the screen door. Her little girl and a neighbor's little boy were playing in the yard, and she screamed to them to run. They did, and were soon spreading the alarm through the neighborhood. The intruder kicked in the screen, forced his way into the house, picked up a butcher knife, and without a word laid a hand on the shoulder of the Arnolds' older girl, nine-year-old Betty June.

When two neighbors came hurrying into the yard, he stood in the doorway, knife in hand, and shouted: "If you come any closer I'll kill the kid." The neighbors retreated. Quiet fell again, and the convict ordered Mrs. Arnold to make him a sandwich. She did, and he bolted it. There was nothing to be seen outside: a crowd of baffled neighbors and policemen were hiding behind a row of bushes.

After half an hour, Snyder led Mrs. Arnold and Betty June out to the Arnold garage, told the mother to get behind the wheel of the Ford convertible. He sat in the middle of the back seat and pulled Betty June in beside him. A state trooper and a part-time policeman named Alex Williams left the bushes, walked into the garage, and began pleading with Snyder to release the girl. He refused. Williams raised a pistol, aimed it carefully at the convict, and pulled the trigger.

The Pistol. As the shot crashed out, Snyder sank the butcher knife into the little girl's abdomen. Williams fired two more shots. The garage filled with white-faced, babbling men. They got the bleeding convict and the little girl out of the car. Betty June cried, "Daddy! Daddy!", but she made no fuss otherwise, and it was presumed that she was only scratched. She died a few hours later.

All Lake Mahopac stores were closed during her funeral two days later, and the little Methodist Church was jammed to overflowing. There was angry muttering in town when it was learned that Snyder would probably live to be tried for murder. But for all that, the whole thing had been so unreal that Lake Mahopac, drowsing again in the sun, could hardly believe it had happened.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.