We waited. A grill opened in the door and a long sallow-face looked out at us under a starched nurse’s cap.
«Open up. It’s the law,» the big cop growled.
A chain rattled and a bolt slid back. The door opened. The nurse was a six-footer with long arms and big hands, an ideal torturer’s assistant. Something happened to her face and I saw she was smiling.
«Why, it’s Mr. Galbraith,» she chirped, in a voice that was high-pitched and throaty at the same time. «How are you, Mr. Galbraith? Did you want to see Doctor?»
«Yeah, and sudden,» Galbraith growled, pushing past her.
We went along the hall. The door of the office was shut. Galbraith kicked it open, with me at his heels and the big nurse chirping at mine.
Dr. Sundtrand, the total abstainer, was having a morning bracer out of a fresh quart bottle. His thin hair was stuck in wicks with perspiration and his bony mask of a face seemed to have a lot of lines in it that hadn’t been there the night before.
He took his hand off the bottle hurriedly and gave us his frozen-fish smile. He said fussily: «What’s this? What’s this? I thought I gave orders —»
«Aw, pull your belly in,» Galbraith said, and yanked a chair near the desk. «Dangle, sister.»
The nurse chirped something more and went back through the door. The door was shut. Dr. Sundstrand worked his eyes up and down my face and looked unhappy.
Galbraith put both his elbows on the desk and took hold of his bulging jowls with his fists. He stared fixedly, venomously, at the squirming doctor.
After what seemed a very long time he said, almost softly: «Where’s Farmer Saint?»
The doctor’s eyes popped wide. His Adam’s apple bobbled above the neck of his smock. His greenish eyes began to look bilious.
«Don’t stall!» Galbraith roared. «We know all about your private hospital racket, the crook hideout you’re runnin’, the dope and women on the side. You made one slip too many when you hung a snatch on this shamus from the big town. Your big city protection ain’t going to do you no good on this one. Come on, where is Saint? And where’s that girl?»
I remembered, quite casually, that I had not said anything about Isobel Snare in front of Galbraith — if that was the girl he meant.
Dr. Sundstrand’s hand flopped about on his desk. Sheer astonishment seemed to be adding a final touch of paralysis to his uneasiness.
«Where are they?» Galbraith yelled again.
The big door opened and the big nurse fussed in again. «Now, Mr. Galbraith, the patients. Please remember the patients, Mr. Galbraith.»
«Go climb up your thumb,» Galbraith told her, over his shoulder.
She hovered by the door. Sundstrand found his voice at last. It was a mere wisp of a voice. It said wearily: «As if you didn’t know.»
Then his darting hand swept into his smock, and out again, with a gun glistening in it. Galbraith threw himself sideways, clean out of the chair. The doctor shot at him twice, missed twice. My hand touched a gun, but didn’t draw it. Galbraith laughed on the floor and his big right hand snatched at his armpit, came up with a Lugar. It looked like my Lugar. It went off, just once.
Nothing changed in the doctor’s long face. I didn’t see where the bullet hit him. His head came down and hit the desk and his gun made thud on the floor. He lay with his face on the desk, motionless.
Galbraith pointed his gun at me, and got up off the floor. I looked at the gun again. I was sure it was my gun.
«That’s a swell way to get information,» I said aimlessly.
«Hands down, shamus. You don’t want to play.»
I put my hands down. «Cute,» I said. «I suppose this whole scene was framed just to put the chill on Doc.»
«He shot first, didn’t he?»
«Yeah,» I said thinly. «He shot first.»
The nurse was sidling along the wall towards me. No sound had come from her since Sundstrand pulled his act. She was almost at my side. Suddenly, much too late, I saw the flash of knuckles on her good right hand, and hair on the back of the hand.
I dodged, but not enough. A crunching blow seemed to split my head wide open. I brought up against the wall, my knees full of water and my brain working hard to keep my right hand from snatching at a gun.
I straightened. Galbraith leered at me.
«Not so very smart,» I said. «You’re still holding my Luger. That sort of spoils the plan, doesn’t it?»
«I see you get the idea, shamus.»
The chirpy-voiced nurse said, in a blank pause: «Jeeze, the guy’s got a jaw like a elephant’s foot. Damn if I didn’t split a knuck on him.»
Galbraith’s little eyes had death in them. «How about upstairs?» he asked the nurse.
«All out last night. Should I try one more swing?»
«What for? He didn’t go for his gat, and he’s too tough for you, baby. Lead is his meat.»
I said: «You ought to shave baby twice a day on this job.»
The nurse grinned, pushed the starched cap and the stringy blond wig askew on a bullet head. She — or more properly he — reached a gun from under the white nurse’s uniform.
Galbraith said: «It was self-defense, see? You tangled with Doe, but he shot first. Be nice and me and Dune will try to remember it that way.»
I rubbed my jaw with my left hand. «Listen, Sarge. I can take a joke as well as the next fellow. You sapped me in that house on Carolina Street and didn’t tell about it. Neither did I. I figured you had reasons and you’d let me in on them at the right time. Maybe I can guess what the reasons are. I think you know where Saint is, or can find out. Saint knows where the Snare girl is, because he had her dog. Let’s put a little more into this deal, something for both of us.»
«We’ve got ours, sappo. I promised Doe I’d bring you back and let him play with you. I put Dune in here in the nurse’s rig to handle you for him. But he was the one we really wanted to handle.»
«All right,» I said. «What do I get out of it?»
«Maybe a little more living.»
I said: «Yeah. Don’t think I’m kidding you — but look at that little window in the wall behind you.»
Galbraith didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes off me. A thick sneer curved his lips.
Duncan, the female impersonator, looked — and yelled.
A small, square, tinted glass window high up in the corner of the back wall had swung open quite silently. I was looking straight at it, past Galbraith’s ear, straight at the black snout of a tommy gun, on the sill, at the two hard black eyes behind the gun.
A voice I had last heard soothing a dog said: «How’s to drop the rod, sister? And you at the desk — grab a cloud.»
EIGHT
The big cop’s mouth sucked for air. Then his whole face lightened and he jerked around and the Luger gave one hard, sharp cough.
I dropped to the floor as the tommy gun cut loose in a short burst. Galbraith crumpled beside the desk, fell on his back with his legs twisted. Blood came out of his nose and mouth.
The cop in nurse’s uniform turned as white as the starched cap. His gun bounced. His hands tried to claw at the ceiling.
There was a queer, stunned silence. Powder smoke reeked. Farmer Saint spoke downward from his perch at the window, to somebody outside the house.
A door opened and shut distinctly and running steps came along the hail. The door of our room was pushed wide. Diana Saint came in with a brace of automatics in her hands. A tall, handsome woman, neat and dark, with a rakish black hat, and two gloved hands holding guns.
I got up off the floor, keeping my hands in sight. She tossed her voice calmly at the window, without looking towards it.