“Not a peep. Shall I go through the motions of ringing?”
I saw the clerk cock an ear in our direction, and I said in a loud voice, “Oh, don’t bother to ring. Aunt Amelia is expecting me. We’ll go right on up.”
She raised her voice. “According to the rules,” she said, “I have to ring.”
The clerk said, “That’s all right, Miss Tarbing. They can go right up,” and he smiled at Bertha.
Bertha gave him one of her most gracious smiles, and I stood to one side while she eased her avoirdupois into the elevator. I followed her. The elevator door clanged shut and we shot upwards.
We left the elevator and walked down the corridor. Bertha Cool said to me, “Any ideas?” and I said, “We’ve got to really get rough with her this time.”
Bertha said, “All right then, lover. You keep out of it. When it comes to getting rough with a woman, I know some fine points that would never occur to a mere man. If it’s getting rough you want, just stand to one side and watch Bertha do her stuff.”
We knocked on the door and waited. There was no sound from the inside. The transom was tightly closed.
I knocked again. Bertha said, “This is a swank place. There’s probably a button here somewhere — here it is.”
She pressed her finger against the button. Still nothing happened. Bertha and I exchanged glances. Then we listened at the door for any sound of motion. We pounded again, and nothing happened.
Bertha said, “That damned operative went to sleep on the job and she sneaked out on us.”
I tried to keep my face from showing what I was feeling.
We pounded on the door again and Bertha Cool rang the buzzer some more. Then she said grimly, “Come on down with me, lover. I want you to hear what I have to say to that snake’s-belly sitting in that car.”
I tagged along behind. There was nothing else to do.
We’d taken half a dozen steps when suddenly Bertha Cool stopped and sniffed. She turned and looked at me.
“What is it?” I asked, and then I caught it, just a faint whiff of gas.
I ran back to the apartment door and dropped to my hands and knees, put my cheek against the carpet, and tried to look under the door. I couldn’t see a thing, just a black strip beneath the jamb of the door. I took a long-bladed knife from my pocket, opened the blade, and inserted it in the crack. It struck some obstacle.
I jumped up, dusted off the knees of my trousers with the palms of my hands, and said, “Come on, Bertha. Let’s go”
We went to the elevator and down to the lobby. I walked up to the clerk and said, “I’m afraid something’s wrong with my Aunt Amelia. She told me to come back at this time, that she’d be here waiting. I went up and pounded on the door and couldn’t get any answer.”
The clerk was very affable. “She s probably gone out.” he said. “She’ll be back in a little white. Would you like to wait in the lobby?”
I said, “She was expecting me. She said, she’d be there.” Frieda Tarbing said, “I’m quite sure she hasn’t gone out.”
“Give her a ring,” the clerk said.
Frieda Tarbing flashed me a quick glance, then plugged in a line, and worked a key back and forth. After a few minutes, she said, “She doesn’t answer.”
The clerk said, “Well, there’s nothing I can do—”
“I thought,” I said, “that there was a faint odour of gas in the corridor.”
The affable smile dissolved from the clerk’s face. I saw his eyes get big and his face change colour. Without a word, he reached under the counter and took out a pass-key. “Come on,” he said.
We went up. The clerk tried fitting the pass-key to the door. It didn’t work. He said, “The door’s bolted from the inside.”
Bertha Cool said, “Donald, you’re thin. You could smash out the glass in that transom, and drop through, and open the door.”
I said to the clerk, “Give me a leg up.”
He said, “I’m not certain we should resort to extreme measures—”
Bertha Cool said, “Here, lover. I’ll give you a boost.”
She picked me up as though I weighed no more than a pillow. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, wadded it around my hand, and smashed in the glass of the transom. A blast of gas came out to strike me in the face.
I said to Bertha, “Slip off your shoe, and give it to me. I can hang on up here.”
I clung to the transom ledge with one toe resting on the doorknob. Bertha Cool slipped off a shoe and pushed it into my hand. I beat out the glass with the heel, then dropped the shoe and slid through the transom.
The gas was terrible. It stung my eyes and made me gag. The room was darkened with the shades all drawn and the drapes pulled into place. I had a glimpse of a bed, and the inert figure of a woman sprawled over a writing-desk, her head on her left hand, her right hand stretched out across the desk.
I held my breath, ran across to the nearest window, jerked the shades to one side, opened the window, stuck my head out, and got a breath of air. I ran across to the other window, opened it, and did the same thing. Then I ran out into the kitchen. The gas stove was going full blast. I could hear the hissing sound of escaping gas. I shut off all the valves and opened the kitchen window.
From the door I could hear the clerk calling, “Open up,” and Bertha Cool’s voice came drifting through the broken transom. “He’s probably overcome by gas. You’d better rim down and call the police.”
There were steps running down the corridor, and then Bertha Cool’s voice, sounding as calm as though she’d been giving me orders over the telephone, saying, “Take your time, lover. Make a good job of it.”
I went over to the desk. Flo Danzer had been writing. There was one letter addressed to Bertha Cool. It was in an envelope. I ran over to the window, took out the letter, and glanced through it. It was a long, rambling account of how she had tried to pose as Amelia Lintig. I saw the name John Harbet, saw the name of Evaline Harris, and then to my dismay saw the name of Dr. Alftmont, of Santa Carlotta.
I slipped the letter back into the envelope, hesitated a moment, then sealed the envelope. I whipped out of my pocket one of the stamped, addressed envelopes with a special delivery stamp in the upper right-hand corner which I used for making out agency reports. I pushed the whole business into this envelope, sealed it, and said to Bertha, “Over the transom.”
I sailed it up. I heard Bertha say, “What do I do with it, lover?” and I said, “Take it over to the mail chute, drop it, and forget it.”
I heard Bertha Cool’s step in the corridor. I was feeling giddy and nauseated. I ran to the window and took a deep breath. Then I went back and looked under Flo Danzer’s head. There was a piece of paper underneath it. She’d been writing, evidently when the gas overcame her. There was a pen in her hand.
I wanted to ease that letter out and see what it contained. I could get the words: To whom it may concern: — the writing seemed to be badly scrawled.
Wind was taking out some of the gas smell, but it was still awfully thick. My eyes were smarting and I felt strangely light-headed. I heard a man’s voice in the corridor saying, “There’s a terrible odour of gas,” then a woman’s voice, and then I heard the sound of steps running down the corridor, and the clerk’s voice saying, “The police will be here, also an ambulance. Here, break that door down. The man inside has been overcome.”
I figured that was the best I could do now. I heard the sounds of bodies slamming against the door. I ran towards the window and dropped down to the floor. I closed my eyes and, as though in a daze, heard the door crash inward and people were running towards me. Someone picked up my shoulders. Someone else picked up my feet. I was carried out to the corridor. People were running around, and a woman was screaming.