“Nothing yet. We’ll try her now, though I doubt if it’ll get us much.”
It didn’t. Gabrielle lay in the middle of the bed, the covers gathered close to her chin as if she was prepared to duck down under them at the first alarm, and shook her head No to everything we asked, whether the answer fit or didn’t.
The nurse came in, a big-breasted, red-haired woman of forty-something with a face that seemed honest because it was homely, freckled, and blue-eyed. She swore on the Gideon Bible that she had been out of the room for less than five minutes, just going downstairs for some stationery, intending to write a letter to her nephew in Vallejo while her patient was sleeping; and that was the only time she had been out of the room all day. She had met nobody in the corridor, she said.
“You left the door unlocked?” I asked.
“Yes, so I wouldn’t be as likely to wake her when I came back.”
“Where’s the stationery you got?”
“I didn’t get it. I heard the explosion and ran back upstairs.” Fear came into her face, turning the freckles to ghastly spots. “You don’t think–!”
“Better look after Mrs. Collinson,” I said gruffly.
XIX. The Degenerate
Rolly and I went back to my room, closing the connecting door. He said:
“Tch, tch, tch. I’d of thought Mrs. Herman was the last person in the world to–”
“You ought to’ve,” I grumbled. “You recommended her. Who is she?”
“She’s Tod Herman’s wife. He’s got the garage. She used to be a trained nurse before she married Tod. I thought she was all right.”
“She got a nephew in Vallejo?”
“Uh-huh; that would be the Schultz kid that works at Mare Island. How do you suppose she come to get mixed up in–?”
“Probably didn’t, or she would have had the writing paper she went after. Put somebody here to keep people out till we can borrow a San Francisco bomb-expert to look it over.”
The deputy called one of the men in from the corridor, and we left him looking important in the room. Mickey Linehan was in the lobby when we got there.
“Fink’s got a cracked skull. He’s on his way to the county hospital with the other wreck.”
“Fitzstephan dead yet?” I asked.
“Nope, and the doc thinks if they get him over where they got the right kind of implements they can keep him from dying. God knows what for–the shape he’s in! But that’s just the kind of stuff a croaker thinks is a lot of fun.”
“Was Aaronia Haldorn sprung with Fink?” I asked.
“Yes. Al Mason’s tailing her.”
“Call up the Old Man and see if Al’s reported anything on her. Tell the Old Man what’s happened here, and see if they’ve found Andrews.”
“Andrews?” Rolly asked as Mickey headed for the phone. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Nothing that I know of; only we haven’t been able to find him to tell him Mrs. Collinson has been rescued. His office hasn’t seen him since yesterday morning, and nobody will say they know where he is.”
“Tch, tch, tch. Is there any special reason for wanting him?”
“I don’t want her on my hands the rest of my life,” I said. “He’s in charge of her affairs, he’s responsible for her, and I want to turn her over to him.”
Rolly nodded vaguely.
We went outside and asked all the people we could find all the questions we could think of. None of the answers led anywhere, except to repeated assurance that the bomb hadn’t been chucked through the window. We found six people who had been in sight of that side of the hotel immediately before, and at the time of, the explosion; and none of them had seen anything that could be twisted into bearing on the bomb-throwing.
Mickey came away from the phone with the information that Aaronia Haldorn, when released from the city prison, had gone to the home of a family named Jeffries in San Mateo, and had been there ever since; and that Dick Foley, hunting for Andrews, had hopes of locating him in Sausalito.