Everything else in the room was white: white-papered walls and white-painted ceiling; white-enameled chairs, bed, table, fixtures—even to the telephone—and woodwork; white felt on the floor. None of the furniture was hospital furniture, but solid whiteness gave it that appearance. There were two windows, and two doors besides the one I had opened. The door on the left opened into a bathroom, the one on the right into a small dressing-room.
I pushed Collinson into the room, followed him, and closed the door. There was no key in it, and no place for a key, no lock of any fixable sort. Collinson stood gaping at the girl, his jaw sagging, his eyes as vacant as hers; but there was more horror in his face. She leaned against the foot of the bed and stared at nothing with dark, blank eyes in a ghastly, puzzled face.
I put an arm around her and sat her on the side of the bed, telling Collinson: “Gather up her clothes.” I had to tell him twice before he came out of his trance.
He brought me her things and I began dressing her. He dug his fingers into my shoulder and protested in a voice that would have been appropriate if I had been robbing a poor-box:
“No! You can’t—”
“What the hell?” I asked, pushing his hand away. “You can have the job if you want it.”
He was sweating. He gulped and stuttered: “No, no! I couldn’t—it—” He broke off and walked to the window.
“She told me you were an ass,” I said to his back, and discovered I was putting the brown and gold blouse on her backwards. She might as well have been a wax figure, for all the help she gave me, but at least she didn’t struggle when I wrestled her around, and she stayed where I shoved her.
By the time I had got her into coat and hat, Collinson had come away from the window and was spluttering questions at me. What was the matter with her? Oughtn’t we to get a doctor? Was it safe to take her out? And when I stood up, he took her away from me, supporting her with his long, thick arms, babbling: “It’s Eric, Gaby. Don’t you know me? Speak to me. What is the matter, dear?”
“There’s nothing the matter except that she’s got a skinful of dope,” I said. “Don’t try to bring her out of it. Wait till we get her home. You take this arm and I’ll take that. She can walk all right. If we run into anybody, just keep going and let me handle them. Let’s go.”
We didn’t meet anybody. We went out to the elevator, down in it to the ground-floor, across the foyer, and into the street without seeing a single person.
We went down to the corner where we had left Mickey in the Chrysler.
“That’s all for you,” I told him.
He said: “Right, so long,” and went away.
Collinson and I wedged the girl between us in the roadster, and he put it in motion.
We rode three blocks. Then he asked: “Are you sure home’s the best place for her?”
I said I was. He didn’t say anything for five more blocks and then repeated his question, adding something about a hospital.
“Why not a newspaper office?” I sneered.
Three blocks of silence, and he started again: “I know a doctor who—”
“I’ve got work to do,” I said; “and Miss Leggett home now, in the shape she’s in now, will help me get it done. So she goes home.”
He scowled, accusing me angrily: “You’d humiliate her, disgrace her, endanger her life, for the sake of—”
“Her life’s in no more danger than yours or mine. She’s simply got a little more of the junk in her than she can stand up under. And she took it. I didn’t give it to her.”
The girl we were talking about was alive and breathing between us—even sitting up with her eyes open—but knowing no more of what was going on than if she had been in Finland.
We should have turned to the right at the next corner. Collinson held the car straight and stepped it up to forty-five miles an hour, staring ahead, his face hard and lumpy.
“Take the next turn,” I commanded.
“No,” he said, and didn’t. The speedometer showed a 50, and people on the sidewalks began looking after us as we whizzed by.
“Well?” I asked, wriggling an arm loose from the girl’s side.
“We’re going down the peninsula,” he said firmly. “She’s not going home in her condition.”
I grunted: “Yeah?” and flashed my free hand at the controls. He knocked it aside, holding the wheel with one hand, stretching the other out to block me if I tried again.
“Don’t do that,” he cautioned me, increasing our speed another half-dozen miles. “You know what will happen to all of us if you—”
I cursed him, bitterly, fairly thoroughly, and from the heart. His face jerked around to me, full of righteous indignation because, I suppose, my language wasn’t the kind one should use in a lady’s company.
And that brought it about.
A blue sedan came out of a cross-street a split second before we got there. Collinson’s eyes and attention got back to his driving in time to twist the roadster away from the sedan, but not in time to make a neat job of it. We missed the sedan by a couple of inches, but as we passed behind it our rear wheels started sliding out of line. Collinson did what he could, giving the roadster its head, going with the skid, but the corner curb wouldn’t cooperate. It stood stiff and hard where it was. We hit it sidewise and rolled over on the lamppost behind it. The lamppost snapped, crashed down on the sidewalk. The roadster, over on its side, spilled us out around the lamppost. Gas from the
