Men came in and dragged us apart.
It took us five minutes to bring Nora to.
She sat up holding her cheek and looked around the room until she saw Morelli, nippers on one wrist, standing between two detectives. Morelli’s face was a mess: the coppers had worked him over a little just for the fun of it. Nora glared at me. “You damned fool,” she said, “you didn’t have to knock me cold. I knew you’d take him, but I wanted to see it.”
One of the coppers laughed. “Jesus,” he said admiringly, “there’s a woman with hair on her chest.”
She smiled at him and stood up. When she looked at me she stopped smiling. “Nick, you’re–”
I said I didn’t think it was much and opened what was left of my pyjama-coat. Morelli’s bullet had scooped out a gutter perhaps four inches long under my left nipple. A lot of blood was running out of it, but it was not very deep.
Morelli said: “Tough luck. A couple of inches over would make a lot of difference the right way.”
The copper who had admired Nora–he was a big sandy man of forty-eight or fifty in a gray suit that did not fit him very well–slapped Morelli’s mouth.
Keyser, the Normandic’s manager, said he would get a doctor and went to the telephone. Nora ran to the bathroom for towels.
I put a towel over the wound and lay down on the bed. “I’m all right. Don’t let’s fuss over it till the doctor comes. How’d von people happen to pop in?”
The copper who had slapped Morelli said: “We happen to hear this is getting to be kind of a meeting-place for Wynant’s family and Ins lawyer and everybody, so we think we’ll kind of keep an eye on it in ease he happens to show up, and this morning when Mack here, who was the eye we were kind of keeping on it at the time, sees this bird duck in, he gives us a ring and we get hold of Mr. Keyser and come on up, and pretty lucky for you.”
“Yes, pretty lucky for me, or maybe I wonldn’t’ve got shot.”
He eyed me suspiciously. His eyes were pale gray and watery. “This bird a friend of yours?”
“I never saw him before.”
“What’d he want of you?”
“Wanted to tell me he didn’t kill the Wolf girl.”
“What’s that to you?”
“Nothing.”
“What’d he think it was to you?”
“Ask him. I don’t know.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Keep on asking.”
“I’ll ask you another one: you’re going to swear to the complaint on him shooting you?”
“That’s another one I can’t answer right now. Maybe it was an accident.”
“Oke. There’s plenty of time. I guess we got to ask you a lot more things than we’d figured on.” He turned to one of his companions: there were four of them. “We’ll frisk the joint.”
“Not without a warrant,” I told him.
“So you say. Come on, Andy.” They began to search the place.
The doctor–a colorless whisp of a man with the snuffles–came in, clucked and sniffed over my side, got the bleeding stopped and a bandage on, and told me I would have nothing to worry about if I lay still for a couple of days. Nobody would tell the doctor anything. The police would not let him touch Morelli. He went away looking even more colorless and vague.
The big sandy man had returned from the living-room holding one hand behind him. He waited until the doctor had gone, then asked: “Have you got a pistol permit?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing with this?” He brought from behind him the gun I had taken from Dorothy Wynant.
There was nothing I could say.
“You’ve heard about the Sullivan Act?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know where you stand. This gun yours?”
“No.”
“Whose is it?”
“I’ll have to try to remember.”
He put the pistol in his packet and sat down on a chair beside the bed. “Listen, Mr. Charles,” he said. “I guess we’re both of us doing this wrong. I don’t want to get tough with you and I don’t guess you really want to get tough with me. That hole in your side can’t be making you feel any too good, so I ain’t going to bother you any more till you’ve had a little rest. Then maybe we can get together the way we ought to.”