Outside, still holding Ned Beaumont by the back of the collar, Jeff kicked him to his feet and ran him down to the far end of the corridor. There he pushed him through an open doorway, bawled, “I’m going to eat one of your ears when I come back, you bastard,” at him, kicked him again, stepped back into the corridor, slammed the door, and turned the key in its lock.
Ned Beaumont, kicked into the room, saved himself from a fall by catching hold of a table. He pushed himself up a little nearer straight and looked around. The towel had fallen down muffler-fashion around his neck and shoulders. The room had two windows. He went to the nearer window and tried to raise it. It was locked. He unfastened the lock and raised the window. Outside was night. He put a leg over the sill, then the other, turned so that he was lying belly-down across the sill, lowered himself until he was hanging by his hands, felt with his feet for some support, found none, and let himself drop.
V.
The Hospital
1
A nurse was doing something to Ned Beaumont’s face.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“St. Luke’s Hospital.” She was a small nurse with very large bright hazel eyes, a breathless sort of hushed voice, and an odor of mimosa.
“What day?”
“It’s Monday.”
“What month and year?” he asked. When she frowned at him he said: “Oh, never mind. How long have I been here?”
“This is the third day.”
“Where’s the telephone?” He tried to sit up.
“Stop that,” she said. “You can’t use the telephone and you mustn’t get yourself excited.”
“You use it, then. Call Hartford six one one six and tell Mr. Madvig that I’ve got to see him right away.”
“Mr. Madvig’s here every afternoon,” she said, “but I don’t think Doctor Tait will let you talk to anybody yet. As a matter of fact you’ve done a whole lot more talking now- than you ought to.”
“What is it now? Morning or afternoon?”
“Morning.”
“That’s too long to wait,” he said. “Call him now.”
“Doctor Tait will be in in a little while.”
“I don’t want any Doctor Taits,” he said irritably. “I want Paul Madvig.”
“You’ll do what you’re told,” she replied. “You’ll lie there and be quiet till Doctor Tait comes.”
He scowled at her. “What a swell nurse you are. Didn’t anybody ever tell you it’s not good for patients to be quarreled with?”
She ignored his question.
He said: “Besides, you’re hurting my jaw.”
She said: “If you’d keep it still it wouldn’t get hurt.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked: “What’s supposed to have happened to me? Or didn’t you get far enough in your lessons to know?”
“Probably a drunken brawl,” she told him, but she could not keep her face straight after that. She laughed and said: “But honestly you shouldn’t talk so much and you can’t see anybody till the doctor says so.”
2
Paul Madvig arrived early in the afternoon. “Christ, I’m glad to see you alive again!” he said. He took the invalid’s unbandaged left hand in both of his.
Ned Beaumont said: “I’m all right. But here’s what we’ve got to do: grab Walt Ivans and have him taken over to Braywood and shown to the gun-dealers there. He–”
“You told me all that,” Madvig said. “That’s done.”
Ned Beaumont frowned. “I told you?”
“Sure–the morning you were picked up. They took you to the Emergency Hospital and you wouldn’t let them do anything to you till you’d seen me and I came down there and you told me about Ivans and Braywood and passed out cold.”
“It’s a blank to me,” Ned Beaumont said. “Did you nail them?”
“We got the Ivanses, all right, and Walt Ivans talked after he was identified in Braywood and the Grand Jury indicted Jeff Gardner and two John Does, but we’re not going to be able to nail Shad on it. Gardner’s the man Ivans dickered with and anybody knows he wouldn’t do anything without Shad’s say-so, but proving it’s another thing.”
“Jeff’s the monkey-looking guy, huh? Has he been picked up yet?”