“Robbie, dammit. I’ve got healed scars on me more dangerous than this. Really, relax.” Her face was pale and she looked weak. I said, “Robbie, we’ll get it all fixed. But it isn’t bad — it’s just all the blood.” I grinned. “My blood, you see, is so red—”
“Are you really all right?”
“Yes. I’m just so red-blooded—”
“Come in and sit down.”
She wouldn’t let me get the conversation headed in the right direction at all. I mopped some of the blood off, clamped a towel under my arm, and went into the front room with her. She insisted we call a doctor — which I had fully intended to do anyway — so after phoning the police I called the room two doors from my own, where Dr. Paul Anson lives. Paul is a good M.D., with a very sharp eye for the ladies, and is also a very good friend of mine. He said he’d be over in a minute.
When he knocked I yelled for him to come on in and he stepped inside, pushed the door shut with his medical bag. Then he walked toward the chocolate-brown divan on which Robbie and I were sitting, and he did not see me at all. His eyes landed on Robbie and opened wide, then went back to normal, except that they had a sly little squint to them, which squint I had seen before.
Very tall, ruggedly good-looking, fired with purpose, he strode straight across the room to Robbie and said in his best bedside manner, “Well, what seems to be wrong with us, my dear?”
“I,” I said, “am what’s wrong with us.”
He looked at me and grinned. “Ah, well. What is it this time? Shot again, hit on the head, busted eardrum—”
“Your tender solicitude gags me, Doctor. Dedicated Paul Anson, swooning on the altar of humanity. ‘I swear on the holy scalpel of Hopocraxopy—’ ”
“Hippocrates?”
“You know what I mean. I’m shot. I’m bleeding to death. I feel faint, I’m getting dippy!”
“You sure are. Let’s take a look.” He examined the sliced area of my chest and side, going “Hmm,” and “Ahh,” and then said: “I think a large Band-Aid will do it. But I’ll give you an expensive shot.”
He expertly cleaned and bandaged what he referred to as my mortal wound, stuck a needle into me, keeping up a running fire of sophisticated chatter and worldly commentary — looking at Robbie all the time; he didn’t say another word to me — then had a drink with us. Just before he left — I had to tell him to get the hell out, of course — he tugged his eyes from Robbie, leaned close to my ear, and said: “You rotter, you despoiler — wait till you get my bill.”
“I know. Two appendectomies, a tonsillitis—”
“Tonsillectomy, you ignorant—”
“—removal of spleen and gizzard, go.”
He went. With one last leer at Robbie.
As the door closed behind him she said: “He’s nice, isn’t he?”
“Is he? I hadn’t noticed—”
“But he’s so witty, and knows so much about the world and all—”
“Nuts, he makes half of it up. Sheer fabrication. It just sounds good in that oily voice of his. Hah, witty, knows so much—”
“Why, Shell, you actually sound jealous.”
“Jealous? Me? Why, I never heard such a—”
She laughed. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, now that he’s gone, I’m all right. What do you mean, witty? He didn’t say anything even intelligent—”
“Shell, lean over here and rest a little.”
She indicated, with a gentle pat of her hand, where I was to lean. I stopped arguing. I leaned. Resting dandily, I said: “Robbie, I have a splendid idea. You must stay here while I recuperate. It may take days, of course, but—”
“The doctor’s right down the hall. What could I do?”
“Well, you could... What good is a doctor? You can be my nurse, dear. And nurse me back to health.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“Why, you could undress my wounds — dress them, I mean, and cool my fevered brow, fever my—”
“You be quiet. Now I’m sure you’re all right. And I have to go.”
“Go?” I said. “Go?”
“Yes. I can’t stay here.”
“Who says?”
“I says. Really. Oh, Shell, sit down. Don’t stand out there waving your arms. You’ll spring open and bleed to death.”
“It wouldn’t happen. Even if it did, I have blood to spare, red blood, wild blood, it sings in my veins and yodels in my arteries, savage blood — listen to the drums! Don’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it? I—”
“Shell, stop waving your arms around. And sit down here and rest.” She patted again. “Or don’t you want to rest?”
“It isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Listen, you don’t know all there is to know about my blood yet—”
“I know more than I realized was possible. And if you want the truth, I believe you. But I really do have to go.”
“Go?” I said. “Go?”
“Yes. In about... five minutes. But I’ll go right now if you don’t sit down and behave yourself.”
“Well, okay. I’ll sit down.”
She meant what she’d said. After five minutes of resting she got up and said, “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Yep. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—”
“I’ll call a cab.”
“The devil you say. I’ll drive you home.”
“No, I wouldn’t think of it.”
“I will drive you home.”
I won that argument, too. The first one since she’d fainted.
Later, alone and relaxing in bed before going to sleep, I thought about what had happened today. The police didn’t yet know who the dead man was, much less the identity of his killer; the killer, therefore, might be roaming around free for days or even weeks. He, on the other hand, obviously knew who I was, realized I’d made a movie of him which could be his ticket to the gas chamber, and probably believed I knew what he looked like. Clearly he did not know his last shot at me had ruined the films.
So he would be roaming around trying to get those films — and kill me.
Maybe I ought to take a full-page ad in the local papers, I thought, addressed to the killer: “You shot a hole in my camera before you shot a hole in me. The films are kaput. Stop worrying!” And sign it Shell Scott. But he probably wouldn’t believe me. The.fool would probably just go on trying to murder me.
Then another link formed in my chain of thought. Maybe I should take that ad, after all, and phrase it differently. Something like: “Sensational films of murderer! Shell Scott shoots killer, killer shoots Shell Scott! Stupendous film sequence, blazing guns, murderer fleeing! Have You Seen This Man? See colossal preview this afternoon at the Colossal Theater...”
I grinned in the darkness. It might work. Still thinking about it, I fell asleep.
3.
It was 10:00 A.M. Tuesday morning. I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard toward the Chasen Theater, off Hollywood on Van Ness Avenue. The thing was set. I knew Jim Chasen, owner of the theater, which was why I’d chosen his movie house. With his cooperation I had run my advertisements in several newspapers yesterday and today. As long as the killer believed his chops were really going to be on the big screen, he would almost certainly try to grab the films. Since we had no way of recognizing the man among the other customers, and therefore couldn’t keep him from getting inside with the crowd, we’d have to wait until he made his move. Jim figured, and so did I, that the action would take place in the projection room, where the killer would naturally expect the films to be.