pair of shoes, which fit fairly well, and a thin, wrinkled raincoat.
“You look just like a doctor,” Sklodovich said.
“A pass.”
“You know the way you’re supposed to go?” Sklodovich asked. I gave an affirmative nod of my head and repeated the instructions he had given me. “The window will be open. I checked it before I came up.”
“I’m ready,” I said, taking a deep breath and thinking that my freedom was in the hands of an assortment of lunatics.
“Quiet,” Sklodovich whispered, putting finger to lips. “Someone’s in the hall.”
He dived for his bed. The flashlight went out as I crawled quickly under my blanket and closed my eyes. The door opened.
“I know you’re still awake.” It was M.C.’s voice. “Don’t get no ideas. I’m locking this door and I’m going to be right outside of it for the rest of the night.”
Sklodovich got up, pat-patted across the floor, and pulled the obviously startled M.C. into the room. Then darkness. Someone had closed the door. I sat listening to the struggle. There was nothing to hear but the panting of two men. It was like earlier arm-wrestling between the candles without the candlelight, and I strained my eyes in the darkness.
“Light,” Sklodovich whispered seconds later.
I jumped from my bed, searched Sklodovich’s blankets for the flashlight, and turned it on. M.C. and Sklodovich were locked together, teeth clenched, hands clasped overhead, stalemated.
“Go on,” Sklodovich said. “I’ll hold him. But hurry.”
Pride, I assumed, kept M.C. from shouting for help. Given time he would probably overcome the hairy madman, but he wanted to do it himself. How much time would it take? Five minutes, I decided. No longer. Maybe much less.
I wrapped the raincoat tightly around me, got the passkey from the closet, and turned to the door.
“Thanks Ivan,” I said, turning out the flashlight.
“My pleasure,” he grunted. “Now go.”
I stepped into the empty hall and closed the door behind me.
The lights in the hall were dim, and I moved as quickly as I could in the shadow of the walls.
I inched along the wall as I’d seen Lloyd Nolan do in a Mike Shayne movie and looked around the corner where I saw a tired, young nurse at the desk looking at herself in a pocket mirror. It was impossible to get to the room at the end of the hall without being seen by her, and seconds were passing. Then the buzzer rang. In the reflection from the alcove window, I could see her get up and turn her back. With a short gulp, I tiptoed across the open space as fast as I could. The stethoscope almost slipped off my neck. In the safety of the other side of the corridor, I heard the buzzer stop. She had obviously not seen me, but she might now turn to my direction to answer the buzzer call. I ran down the hall to room 421. It had twin, reinforced glass doors, and in the near-total darkness I could make out a long ward room with beds on either side. There was an aisle between the beds, and at the far end I could see another set of double doors. A man was seated at a desk behind those far doors, and behind him was an elevator.
The source of the dim yellow light, which cast a slight and eerie shadow of beds on the wall, came from a desk lamp to the left of the double doors through which I walked. At the desk sat a stocky tree trunk of a man with a flat head, made more flat by his close-cut hair. The white-clad man squinted over his glasses at me as I walked toward him and began to rise, but sat down again.
“Hello, doc,” he whispered.
“Hello,” I whispered and tried to smile. He looked suspiciously at my mashed face, but the white uniform and stethoscope, which I made sure he could see underneath my open coat, seemed to satisfy him.
“Is there a patient named Barton on this ward?” I asked.
He pushed his glasses back on his large nose and looked at a clipboard before him, running his finger quickly down a list of names on it.
“No, but there is a Bartnik.”
“Must have the wrong ward. I could swear they said two.”
“This is four, doc. You want two floors below.”
“I didn’t pay much attention when I got on the elevator. Must have pressed the wrong button. First time I’ve been here, you know.”
“I didn’t think I recognized you. You sure it’s two you want?”
“You know, now I’m not sure. I’ll go down and check it out.”
“I’ll call records for you, doc, and find out what room this Barton is in.”
He reached for the phone on his desk.
“The name is Bartoni, but hold on.” I pretended to look at the watch on my wrist. “I’m not going to have time to see him as it is. I’d better just get down to emergency.” He held the phone in his hand for a second, looked at me, and put down the phone.
“Suit yourself, doc.” I turned toward the aisle between the two rows of beds. “Doc, do you mind if I check your pass. I mean so I can enter it in the night log.”
I walked to the desk, shrugged, and handed the card Sklodovich had given me to the nearsighted orderly.
“Thanks, doc.”
“Right,” I said as jauntily as I could, took the card back, and hurried down the aisle toward the far double glass doors. His eyes, I could feel, were fixed on my back as I walked away from him, expecting to hear him calling for me to stop. I hurried out of the light from the small desk lamp. About midway across the room I heard a loud voice behind me.
“You mad bastard. Did you think you could get away with this?”
I came close to panic, but I held the metal rail at the foot of the nearest bed. Trapped between two orderlies, I waited for them, or rather the one behind me with the flat head, to leap on my back.
The clap of footsteps echoed behind me in a rush, growing louder and closer, and I turned to see the squat tree trunk coming toward me like a black shadow, a shadow with arms outstretched like an ape to take me in a wild grip and crush me into a small whimper. When he was close enough to touch me, I pulled my doubled fist back, hoping to get in one lucky punch and run like hell. He ducked past me and moved to the side of a patient sitting upright and pointing at me out of the darkness.
“He’s not a doctor. He’s a mad bastard. I know him.”
The man did not shout, but he spoke with anger. He was a little bone bag, that much I could tell but no more, for he was now held in a smothering bear hug by the orderly, whose glasses slipped dangerously down his nose.
“Just calm down now,” soothed the orderly, pausing to push his glasses back. “Take it easy. It’s all right, doctor. I’ll take care of him.”
“Right,” I said as if this sort of thing happened to me all the time, which might be true if ‘all the time’ began that afternoon.
“As your Lord God and Savior,” hissed the little man in the bed, “I tell you he is not a doctor. I saw him led into this purgatory several aeons ago by that same Delilah who the fallen one sent to tempt and destroy-”
His voice was cut off by the glass door through which I had stepped. Vaguely I thought of how many minutes I might have to go before the alarm was sounded by M.C.
The small space was well lighted to show the elevator and a white-haired, powerful-looking wiry man who sat at a desk before me. A cynical smile greeted me when he looked up from the book he was reading.
“Pass,” he said.
I handed him the pass. He examined it and handed it back to me.
“Trouble in there?” he asked. “Heard a little noise.”
“The other orderly is taking care of it,” I said, pushing the button for the elevator.
“Little fella? ’Bout halfway down on the left?”
“Yes,” I said.
“God.”
“What?”
