Sergeant Sellers dropped the receiver into place at the other end of the line.
Flabbergasted, Bertha Cool made two abortive attempts get the receiver in its cradle before she finally succeeded.
“What is it?” Elsie Brand asked, looking at her face.
Bertha’s rage was gone now. An emotional reaction left her white and shaken. “I’m in a jam,” she said, and walked over to the nearest chair and sat down.
“What’s the matter?”
“I went out and got that blind man. I smuggled him out of the hotel. I was absolutely satisfied the police would never trace me. I stubbed my toe. Now, they’ve got him — and they’ve got me. That damn, overbearing, bullying, sneering police sergeant is right. They’ve got me over a barrel.”
“That bad?” Elsie Brand asked.
“It’s worse,” Bertha Cool said. “Well, there’s no use in stopping now. You’ve got to keep on moving. It’s like skating near the centre of a pond where the ice begins to buckle. The minute you stop, you’re finished. You’ve just got to keep moving.”
“Where to?” Elsie asked.
“Right now, to Redlands.”
“Why Redlands?” Elsie Brand asked. “I don’t get it.”
Bertha told her about the music box, the conversation Sergeant Sellers had had with the owner, and with a sudden unusual burst of confidence, the entire adventures of the night.
“Well,” Bertha Cool said at length, heaving herself up out of the chair, “I didn’t sleep a damn wink last night. I was just too mad. I never regretted taking off weight as much in my life as I did last night.”
“Why?” Elsie asked.
“Why!” Bertha exclaimed. “I’ll tell you why. There was a damn snooty matron who kept calling me dearie. She was a husky, broad-shouldered biddy, but before I took off my weight, I could have thrown her down and sat on her. And that’s exactly what I’d have done. I’d have sat on her and stayed there the whole blessed night. I’m in a jam, Elsie. I’ve got to get out of the office and lay low until the thing blows over. They’ve got that blind man, and he’ll tell them the whole business. Sergeant Sellers was right. I should have kept on doing business in the routine way. But Donald is such a reckless little runt, and he did such daring damn things, he got me into bad habits. I got to thinking, Elsie, I’m going out of here and get a drink of whisky — and then I’m going to Redlands.”
Chapter XXIX
Hot, dry sunlight beat down on Redlands. The dark green of orange groves laid out in neat checkerboards contrast, with the deep blue of the clear sky and the towering pea which rose more than ten thousand feet above sea level the background. There was a clean, washed freshness about the dry air which should have been invigorating, but Bertha worry and preoccupation made her entirely oblivious of the beauty of the scenery and the freshness of the air.
Bertha dragged herself out of the automobile, plough across the sidewalk, head down, arms swinging, climbed the steps of the sanitarium, entered the lobby, and said in a flat dejected voice to the girl at the information desk, “Do you by any chance, have a Josephine Dell here?”
“Just a moment.” The girl thumbed through a card index said, “Yes. She has a private room, two-o-seven.”
“A nurse there?” Bertha asked.
“No. Apparently she’s just here for a complete rest.”
Bertha said, “Thank you,” and went pounding her weary way down the long corridor. She found the elevator, went the second floor, found room 207, knocked gently on the swinging door, and pushed it open.
A blonde girl about twenty-seven with deep-blue eyes, smiling lips, and a slightly upturned nose, sat in a chair the window. She was attired in a silk negligee. Her ankles were crossed on a pillow placed on another chair in front her. She was reading a book with every evidence of enjoyment, but looked up with a start as Bertha entered the room, letting Bertha have the benefit of the large, deep-blue eyes.
“You startled me.”
“I knocked,” Bertha explained.
“I was interested in this detective story. Do you ever read them?”
“Once in a while,” Bertha said.
“I never have until I came to the hospital. I didn’t think I’d ever have the time, but now I’m going to become an ardent fan. I think the detection of crime is the most absorbing, the most interesting thing in the world, don’t you?”
Bertha said, “It’s all in the way you look at it, I guess.”
“Well, do sit down. Tell me what I can do for you.”
Bertha Cool dropped wearily into the cushioned chair over in the corner. “You’re Josephine Dell?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re the one who is friendly with the blind man?”
“Oh, you mean that blind man on the corner by the bank building?” the girl asked eagerly.
Bertha nodded dispiritedly.
“I think he’s a dear. I think he’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever known. He has the most sane outlook on life. He isn’t soured at all. Lots of people who are blind would shut themselves off from the world, but he doesn’t. He seems to be more aware of the world now that he’s blind than he possibly could have been when he had his eyesight. And I think he’s really happy, although, of course, his existence is very much circumscribed. That is, I mean physically and so far as contacts are concerned.”
“I suppose so,” Bertha admitted without enthusiasm.
Josephine Dell warmed to her subject. “Of course, the man was relatively uneducated and poor to start with. If he had only learned to read by touch, had started studying and given himself an education — but he couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t afford to. He was absolutely penniless and destitute.”
“I understand.”
“Then he got lucky. He made a very fortunate investment in oil, and now he can live very much as he pleases; but he feels that it’s too late, that he’s too old.”
“I suppose so,” Bertha agreed. “You’re the one who sent him the music box?”
“Yes — but I didn’t want him to know that. I just wanted it to come to him from a friend. I was afraid he wouldn’t accept that expensive a gift from a working girl, although I can afford it now very well. At the time I started paying for it, I felt that I couldn’t.”
“I see,” Bertha said wearily. “Well, I seem to have been whipsawed all the way around. I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about the Josephine Dell who had the accident, do you?”
“What accident?” she asked curiously.
Bertha said, “The accident that took place there on the corner by the bank building about quarter to six Friday night. The man hit this young woman with his automobile and knocked her down. She didn’t think she was hurt much, but—”
“But I’m that person,” Josephine Dell said.
The sag snapped out of Bertha Cool’s back as she jerked herself rigidly erect. “You’re what?” she asked.
“I’m that girl.”
“One of us,” Bertha announced, “is nuts.”