I felt fresh air on my face, and Bertha Cool saying, “Here, put him out on that window ledge. Hang on to his feet. He may drop.”
I inhaled great lungfuls of fresh air and opened my eyes. People were milling around. I heard the clerk say, “Poor chap. It was his aunt—” There followed a confused interval of blurred half-consciousness, and then I heard the sound of a siren. A few minutes later, officers from a radio car were in charge. After a while an ambulance came. People went into the room and came out.
I looked up into Bertha Cool’s face and said, “Remember to give them her name. She’s Amelia Lintig of Oakview.”
“It’s on the register, lover,” Bertha said.
“Be sure to see they get it right,” I said.
After a while I tried my legs. They were a little wobbly. A man in a white coat said, “How are you feeling, buddy? Think you can get down to the ambulance under your own power?”
“I want to stay here with my aunt,” I said.
Bertha Cool said, “It’s only partially the gas. He’s been under a terrific strain worrying about his aunt. He knew she was despondent.”
The white-coated man stuck a stethoscope on my chest, said, “Here, we’ve got to get him out to the air.”
I pushed him away and said, “I want to know what’s happened”
“You can’t go in there,” the ambulance man said.
“I’ve got to.”
Bertha Cool said cooingly, “Poor boy. It was his favourite aunt.”
I went into the room. Radio officers were in charge. One of them said, “It’s too late to do anything here. The body isn’t to be touched until the coroner comes. Who shut off the gas?”
“I did,” I said.
The clerk said, “They broke in the transom at my orders. I knew it was the only thing to do.”
Bertha Cool glanced at me meaningly. “You’d better go in the ambulance, lover,” she said.
I looked at Bertha, and said, “I can’t. There’s an important letter—”
“I know, lover,” she said. “Leave it to Bertha. She’ll take care of it.”
The ambulance man put an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, buddy. Your heart is taking an awful beating. You got quite a dose of gas. If you could only smell your own breath, you’d realize it. You smell like a gas house.”
I went down to the ambulance. Strained, white faces in the lobby eyed me as though I’d been some alien creature. I stretched out on the cot in the ambulance. I felt a needle prick my arm, and heard the scream of the siren.
After a while I began to feel better and realized that the ambulance was the safest place for me — that and the receiving hospital. The police were looking for me in too many different places on too many different charges.
Chapter Fourteen
Bertha Cool called on me in the receiving hospital. “I have a cab waiting, lover, any time you feel like trying to leave. How are you?”
The nurse looked at my chart and said, “He’s suffering from a general run-down condition as well as the shock and the gas.”
Bertha said, “It’s no wonder. Poor boy. He’s been working twenty-four hours a day, and he isn’t built for it.”
The nurse said to me, “You must take things easier.” I said, “I’m better now. I think I can leave.” The nurse said, “Just a minute. I’ll get the doctor’s permission.”
She walked down the corridor. I heard the whir of a telephone dial, and then she started talking, saying something in a low voice which I couldn’t understand.
I said to Bertha, “Wise me up.”
Bertha, with an eye on the corridor, said, “You doped it out right. She committed the murder.”
“How about the confession?” I asked. “Did it mention Alftmont?”
Bertha said, “No. The confession was unfinished and unsigned, but it was in her handwriting. It was one of those ‘to whom it may concern’ things. It started right out by saying that she was the one who had murdered Evaline Harris.”
“Did it mention Harbet’s name?”
“No. That was in the letter she wrote and addressed to me.”
“Are we going to have to use that letter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If we do,” I said, “remember that e had left her a stamped, addressed envelope, and told her to drop us a line about some other matter. She mailed the letter herself and—”
Bertha Cool said, “For God’s sake, Donald, don’t think everybody is dumb. I got the play as soon as you threw it over the transom. We aren’t going to have to use it. It’s nice, but it’s dynamite.”
“She says something about Harbet in there,” I said.
“Spilled the whole beans. All about how Harbet wanted to bring pressure to bear on Dr. Alftmont.”
I said, “I want to put in a telephone call for Harbet. I’ll tell him confidentially that we have—”
Bertha said, “You’ll have a hell of a time reaching him. Harbet has taken a powder. The D.A. here telephoned Santa Carlotta about the suicide. Harbet got up from his desk, walked out, and hasn’t returned. He won’t return.”
I thought that over. “I wanted to be the one to tell him,” I said.
“You’re a vindictive little cuss, Donald.”
“What did she say happened to the real Mrs. Lintig?”
“She didn’t know. Amelia married Wilmen, and went down into Central America somewhere. They never showed up again. Amelia left her trunk with Flo. Flo kept it in her place for a while, then put it in storage, and finally went through it and took out what she wanted. She figured Amelia was dead.”
“But she can’t prove it.”
“No”
I said, “That’s what I was afraid of. Insist that this woman is Amelia Lintig. Perhaps we can get by with it and get a certificate of death.”
Bertha said, “There you go again, Donald, thinking you have to point out every play for me. For God’s sake, don’t you give me credit for—”
The nurse came back down the corridor. A doctor was with her. The doctor said gravely, “I’m sorry, Mr. Lam, but orders are that as soon as you’re able to leave here, you’re to go to the district attorney’s office.”
“You mean that I’m under arrest?”
“It amounts to that.”
“For what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Those are orders. I think that you’ve been under a great strain lately. You are wiry and strong. Organically you’re as sound as a nut, but your nerves can’t stand the terrific whipping you’ve been giving them lately. I dislike to have you subjected to any undue strain, but those are orders. A detective is on the way to pick you up.”
I said, “Can Mrs. Cool go along? I’d like to have her corroborate parts of my story.”
“I don’t think so,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to ask the detective about that.”
He went away. The nurse kept sticking around. After a while a detective came in and said, “Come on, Lam. We’re going to run over to the district attorney’s office.”
“Who wants me over there?”
“Mr. Ellis.”
I said, “What’s the charge?”
“I don’t know that there is any.”
Bertha Cool said, “He’s intensely nervous. He’s in no condition to questioned or bullied.”
The detective shrugged his shoulders.
Bertha Cool took my arm and said, “I’ll come right along, Donald.”
The detective said, “You can go as far as the D.A.’s office. After that, it’s up to Mr. Ellis.”
We went to the district attorney’s office. A secretary said Mr. Ellis wanted to see me, and Bertha Cool tagged right along. The secretary said, “Only Mr. Lam,” but Bertha couldn’t hear her. Her attitude was filled with the maternal concern of a setting hen. She held open the door of the office marked Mr. Ellis and said, “Go right on in, Donald,” as though she’d been talking to a five-year-old child.