There was a second or two of silence. Bertha Cool looked to me for instructions.
Ashbury shook his head at me. “Let it go, Lam,” he said. “I think I’m getting somewhere.”
“You just think you’re getting somewhere. If you were, I’d let you go, but the cards are stacked against you.”
Mrs. Ashbury said, “The doctor will testify that I’m in no condition to answer questions.”
“I most certainly will,” Dr. Parkerdale said. “This whole procedure is outrageous.”
Bob was glad of the opportunity to get out. “Come, Mother, I’ll get you back to bed.”
“Yes,” she said, in a voice that was a little above a whisper. “Things are going around and around.”
Bertha Cool pushed a chair to one side, strode over to the door, and kicked it shut.
Ashbury looked at her and said, “No.”
Bertha heaved a sigh. She was itching to pitch in and handle the situation, but a hundred dollars a day was a hundred dollars a day and instructions were instructions.
The nurse came toward the door. Bertha moved to one side. The nurse opened the door, and the doctor and Bob led Mrs. Ashbury down the corridor and into her bedroom. The door slammed. I heard the turn of a key in the lock.
Bertha Cool said, “Nuts.”
Ashbury said, “We can’t risk it, Donald. It’s all right if we stood a chance, but that doctor knows which side of the bread has the butter. This will look like hell in a divorce court.”
“You’re the boss,” I said. “Personally, I think you’ve scrambled the eggs.”
A door down the corridor was opened, slammed, then locked. Dr. Parkerdale came striding indignantly into the room. “You have all but killed her,” he said.
“No one invited her to this party,” I said. “Send Bob back here. We want to question him.”
“He can’t leave his mother’s bedside. I won’t be responsible for consequences if—”
“No one wants you to be responsible for anything,” Bertha Cool said. “You couldn’t kill that woman with a sledge hammer, and you know it. She’s putting on an act.”
Dr. Parkerdale said, “Madam, like all laymen, you’re prone to judge from external appearances. I’m telling you, her blood pressure has reached a dangerous point.”
“Let it come to a boil,” Bertha said. “It’ll do her good.”
Ashbury said to the doctor, “You think she’s in a dangerous physical condition?”
“Very critical,” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Bertha Cool snorted. “So critical that he leaves his patient to strut down the hall and try to make evidence for a divorce court.”
The significance of that remark soaked into Dr. Parkerdale’s mind. He turned wordlessly and walked back down the corridor to Mrs. Ashbury’s room. He knocked. The door was unlocked, opened, and locked again.
Bertha Cool kicked my door closed.
Ashbury said, “I’m sorry, Donald, but they’ve ganged up on us. The nurse won’t contradict the doctor.”
I reached for my hat. “It’s your funeral,” I said. “I had a winning hand until you trumped my ace.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be. If you want to do a good day’s job, start getting worried about your wife.”
“That would be playing right into their hands.”
“So worried,” I went on, “that you insist on a consultation. Get a doctor of some real standing in the profession, get him out here right away, and take her blood pressure.”
He looked at me for a minute, then his eyes softened into a twinkle. He started for the telephone.
I said, “Come on, Bertha.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tokamura Hashita sat on the edge of the bed, blinked his eyes against the light, and listened to my proposition. I said, “These experts say the stuff’s no good, Hashita. They claim it only works with rubber knives and unloaded guns. They claim they’ll put on a test and tie you in a bow-knot like a shoelace. They offer to bet fifty bucks. I tried to show them what you’d taught me, and they jammed me into a garbage can and told me they could do the same with you.”
His eyes reflected back the lights as though they’d been burnished with black lacquer. “Excuse please,” he said. “Plant acorn. After a while is very big oak tree, but cannot make lumber from green sapling. Must allow time for growth.”
I said, “Well, if you think it’ll work, I’m willing to be shown, but the way things stand right now, I think it’s just a stunt. I’ve got fifty bucks to cover their bets.”
He got up and pushed his feet into straw sandals, slippety-slopped across to a closet, opened a door, peeled off his pajamas, and pulled on clothes. When he turned to me, there were reddish lights in his eyes. He didn’t say a word.
I led the way out of the door. He put on a coat and hat, and went down to where the taxicab was waiting at the curb, the meter clicking merrily away. He didn’t say a word as we got in, and he didn’t say a word all the way to the gambling club.
When he was dressed up, he wasn’t a bad-looking chap, a bit heavy in the waist. But it was just thick body muscles, not fat, that gave him that chunky appearance.
I walked over to the roulette table and started gambling. He stood a couple of paces behind me, looking at me scornfully.
The brunette who had taken over Esther Clarde’s date looked up, saw me, and hastily averted her eyes. A moment later she slid quietly out of the room and through a door marked Private. I pushed some chips in the Jap’s hand and said, “Put those on the board.” I quit playing. The brunette came back, said something to the man at the wheel, and looked right through me as though she’d never seen me before in her life.
The Jap put a chip on number thirty-six, and the ball, whirring and jumping around the track of the wheel, popped into pocket thirty-six.
The croupier raked in all the chips.
I said, “My friend had a chip on thirty-six.”
The croupier looked at me and shook his head. “Sorry. Your mistake.”
“The hell it is,” I said, and turned to Hashita. “Where did you put that chip, Hashita?”
He placed a thick, capable forefinger on the thirty-six.
The croupier said, “You’ll have to take this up with the manager.”
A man appeared as by magic at my elbow. “This way,” he said.
It was done that simply. None of that movie stuff of having a couple of tight-lipped men move up on each side — just a matter of putting the customer in a position where he had to beef, telling him to take the beef to the manager, and marching him through that door marked Private.
“Come on, Hashita,” I said.
The man who escorted us into the office didn’t bother to come in. He pulled the door shut. A lock clicked — probably an electric bolt which could be released by pressing a button somewhere on the manager’s desk.
The manager was a thin-mouthed chap with high cheekbones, grey eyes, and restless hands. The long, slim fingers seemed delicately fragile. The hands were those of a poet, a musician — or a gambler.
He looked up at me and said, “Sit down, Lam,” and then looked questioningly at the Jap.
I said, “This chap put a chip on the thirty-six. The thirty-six turned up, and the croupier raked in all the chips.”
“Dollar chips?” the manager asked.
I nodded.
He opened a drawer, took out a stack of silver dollars, and shoved them across to the Jap. “All right,” he said, “that disposes of you.”
He looked at me and said, “Now that you’re here, Lam, you can sit over there at that desk and write out a statement that you were in room four-twenty-one when Jed Ringold was killed, that you went through his pockets, and took out a check for ten thousand dollars payable to cash.”