woman s. Acrid smoke stung his nose, his eyes. Together, making an enormous noise, he and the woman fired again.
'You bastard!' said the woman. Her voice was husky, like Delia Young s.
She let go one more shot, shattered the windowpane and fled. Crane ran to the door, stepped out into the corridor. The woman was three quarters of the way down the corridor in the direction of the elevator. She was running, and a blue skirt flared out under the brown fur coat. She was a big woman with muscular legs. Her hat hid the color of her hair.
Swinging down his revolver in a smooth arc, Crane took a careful shot at her. The revolver made a swell echo in the corridor. He didn t see that the shot had taken effect, though. Still running, the woman rounded the turn by the elevator.
Miss Edens was behind Crane. 'Who was it?'
'I don t know.'
He started to run along the corridor. She ran after him, said:
'It sounds like the fall of Shanghai.'
Their progress was abruptly halted by the woman. She leaned suddenly around the corner, took a pot shot at Crane. Floppy hat, coat collar, shielded her face. Miss Edens ducked into her anteroom. Crane, further along, leaped for the door to Room 417, opened it, backed into the room.
The woman fired another shot and Crane went further into the room. Behind him a woman began to scream.
'For God s sake, lady!' he said. 'I won t hurt you.'
He stuck his head out the door; the woman was gone. He stepped into the corridor. Nothing happened. He heard the whine of the elevator. He ran down the corridor, almost tripped over the body of a woman in a nurse s uniform. She was lying on the cement floor beside a table with a telephone on it, her head in a pool of blood. A chair had toppled across her feet.
The elevator was an automatic one. The golden arrow on the circle of Roman numerals above the glass doors was moving counterclockwise between III and II. Crane seized the phone.
'Hello. Hello! Goddamn it! Hello!' His thumb jiggled the hook. 'Hello. Are there guards from March amp; Company in the lobby?… Well, tell em to stop whoever s coming down in the elevator. Quick!'
He dropped the receiver. Miss Edens was bending over the floor nurse.
'Is she dead?' he asked.
'I don t think so.'
The golden arrow reached I, promptly started up again. Gray smoke swirled through the corridor. Miss Edens lifted the nurse s head, pushed a black leather chair pad under it. The nurse moaned softly. The golden arrow passed II.
Crane stared at it. 'She s coming back.'
Miss Edens said, 'She s not!'
Crane looked at the. 38. He had two shots. 'Maybe she ll get off at three,' he said.
The woman in 417 screamed. Her voice was shrill with terror; it made shivers run along Crane s spine. She screamed, caught her breath in a sob, screamed again.
The golden arrow went by III.
'You better get the hell out of here,' Crane said to Miss Edens.
He pulled the reception desk from the wall, put a foot against one leg, with his free hand sent it to the floor on its side. Temperature charts zigzagged through the air; pencils, erasers, paper clips, chewing gum, a thermometer slid to the floor; the telephone smashed on the cement.
The woman in 417 screamed.
He slid the nurse s feet out of the way, knelt behind the table. She had on half-length silk hose, her thighs were bare. He could see a light behind the semiopaque glass doors of the shaft. He steadied his revolver hand on the upper edge of the table. Miss Edens was standing in a doorway farther up the corridor.
With a metallic click, the elevator reached IV. Crane crouched behind the table, aimed the revolver at the door. Squeeze the trigger, he kept thinking, squeeze the trigger. The nurse was conscious. She watched him through eyes bright with fear.
The elevator door slid open and Alice March stepped into the corridor, a sweet smile on her plump face, white flowers in her arms, a floppy hat on her head.
CHAPTER XIX
In the porcelain-walled hospital canteen, Crane brooded over coffee liberally laced with whisky. He felt very bad. He blamed himself for the woman s escape; he still didn t know how to pin the crimes on the murderer; he felt he had failed Ann. He wished he wasn t a detective.
At his table, having coffee and hamburger sandwiches, was practically everyone in any way connected with the case. Dr Rutledge had returned after four hours sleep, and the others were staying all night in the hospital, despite the fact that Simeon March had passed his crisis a few minutes after the shooting and had briefly regained consciousness.
Alice March was telling the others in her sweet, malicious voice how she felt when she was confronted with Crane s revolver.
'I really thought he d run amuck,' she said. 'Especially when I saw the nurse lying in a pond of blood.'
Peter March, his skin dead white under a blue growth of beard, listened to her with a bewildered air.
'I still don t understand all this,' he said.
Between bites of hamburger, Dr Rutledge told the entire story from the time he had agreed to put Crane in Simeon March s room to the escape of the intruder. He talked mostly to Carmel, whose lovely face again reminded Crane of a tinted mask, aloof and serene, yet somehow watchful.
Further down the porcelain table was Dr Woodrin. His round face looked tired and some of the pink had faded. He listened to Dr Rutledge and drank black coffee.
'Crane thought the murderer might come back… ' Dr Rutledge said.
Well, the plan had worked, Crane thought, drinking some of the coffee. Only he had muffed it. He supposed a braver man would have been closer behind the intruder, close enough to see her take the metal emergency stairs leading to the roof.
He d just about got straight in his mind what had happened. The woman, after driving him into the room with the screaming lady, had run for the elevator, only to find someone (Alice March) had called it down. So she had ducked through a door marked Exit and had run up on the roof.
He d been so dumfounded when Alice had walked out of the returning elevator, Crane admitted, that he hadn t thought of the possibility of another exit. He d felt as if the woman had blown away like a puff of smoke. He d just stared at Alice s astonished face.
A second later the guards from March amp; Company had arrived by way of the regular stairs, and he learned from them that Alice was already going up in the elevator when they reached it.
And it was Alice March who had finally said:
'Couldn t she have gone through that little door?'
On the metal stairs they had found traces of blood. A few drops had made… on the steps, and there were two maroon smudges on the steel handrail.
'Must have winged her,' one of the guards said.
'Not bad, though,' the other said.
There had been a guard at the foot of the outside fire escape, and for a time Crane had hoped he might have caught the woman. But the trail of blood drops led two stories down the escape, then perilously crossed to an open window in the Nurses Home adjoining City Hospital. Once in this building, the woman had walked down the back fire escape into the alley.
Crane took another drink of the spiked coffee. He had only himself to blame. Still he couldn t be expected to surround all the buildings in the neighborhood; he didn t have enough men, anyway. He…
