The woman lay in her deep waiting silence. I stepped around her and stood against the wall beside the door. I shifted the flash to my left hand and fumbled for the spring lock with my right.
`I hear you, damn you. You want another taste of what you had today?'
He waited, and then said: `If you won't open the door, I'll shoot the lock out.'
I heard the click of a hammer. I stayed where I was beside the door, holding the flashlight like a club. But he didn't fire.
`On the other hand,' he said, `there's nothing in there I need, including you. You can stay here on your can if you want to. Make up your mind right now.'
He waited. He couldn't outwait her.
`This is your last chance. I'll count to three. If you don't open up, I'm traveling alone.'
He counted, one, two, three, but it would take bigger magic to reach her. `Good riddance to bad rubbish,' he said.
His footsteps moved away on the stones. The car door creaked. I couldn't let him go.
I snapped back the lock and opened the door and rushed him. His shadowy hatted figure was halfway into his car, with one foot on the ground. He whirled. The gun was still in his hand. It gave out a hot little flame. I could feel it sear me.
I staggered across the gravel and got hold of his twisting body. He hammered my hands loose with the butt of his gun. I had blood in my eyes, and I couldn't avoid the gun butt when it smashed into my skull. A kind of chandelier lit up in my head and then crashed down into darkness.
Next thing I was a VIP traveling with a police guard in the back of a chauffeured car. The turban I could feel on my head suggested to the joggled brain under it that I was a rajah or a maharajah. We turned into a driveway under a red light, which excited me. Perhaps I was being taken to see one of my various concubines.
I raised the question with the uniformed men sitting on either side of me. Gently but firmly, they helped me out of the patrol car and walked me through swinging doors, which a man in white held open, into a glaring place that smelled of disinfectants.
They persuaded me to sit down on a padded table and then to lie down. My heart hurt. I felt it with my hands. It had a towel around it, sticky with blood.
A large young face with a moustache leaned over me upside down. Large hairy hands removed the towel and did some probing and scouring in my scalp. It stung.
`You're a lucky man. It parted your hair for you, kind of permanently.'
`How bad is it, Doctor?'
`The bullet wound isn't serious, just a crease. As I said, you're lucky. This other lesion is going to take longer to heal. What did you get hit with?'
`Gun butt. I think.'
`More fun and games,' he said.
`Did they catch him?'
`You'll have to ask them. They haven't told me a thing.'
He clipped parts of my head and put some clamps in it and gave me a drink of water and an aspirin. Then he left me lying alone in the white-partitioned cubicle. My two guards moved rapidly into the vacuum.
They were sheriff's men, wearing peaked hats and tan uniforms. They were young and hearty, with fine animal bodies and rather animal, not so fine, faces. Good earnest boys, but a little dull. They said they wanted to help me.
`Why did you kill her?' the dark one said.
`I didn't. She'd been dead for some time when I found her.'
`That doesn't let you out. Mr. Stanislaus said you were there earlier in the day.'
`He was with me all the time.'
`That's what you say,' the fair one said.
This repartee went on for some time, like a recording of an old vaudeville act, which some collector had unwisely preserved. I tried to question them. They wouldn't tell me anything. My head was feeling worse, but oddly enough I began to think better with it. I even managed to get up on my elbows and look at them on the level.
`I'm a licensed private detective from Los Angeles.'
`We know that,' the dark one said.
I felt for my wallet. It was missing. `Give me my wallet.'
`You'll get it back all in good time. Nobody's going to steal it.'
`I want to talk to the sheriff.'
`He's in bed asleep.'
`Is there a captain or lieutenant on duty?'
`The lieutenant is busy at the scene of the crime. You can talk to him in the morning. The doctor says you stay here overnight. Concussion. What did the woman hit you with, anyway?'
`Her husband hit me, with a gun butt.'
