Then the bar door kicked open and a couple of patrolmen stormed in.
They looked at me, bleeding onto the floor and Rima leaning against me, her sweater sleeve blood soaked, and one of them pulled his club and started across towards me.
‘Hey! He’s the guy you want.’ I said.
The cop looked as if he were going to take a swing at my head. He paused, then looked over his shoulder at the hay head on the floor, then back at me.
‘Okay, okay,’ the other patrolman said. ‘Don’t rush it, Tom. Let’s get it all straightened out, shall we?’
Rima gave a sudden sighing moan and fainted. I just had time to take her weight before she slid to the floor.
I knelt by her, supporting her head. I felt pretty bad myself.
‘Can’t you do something?’ I bawled at the patrolman. ‘She’s bleeding!’
The calm cop came over. He took out a pocket knife and cut away her sleeve. He inspected the long, deep cut on her arm. He produced a first-aid pack and in less than a minute, he had strapped her arm, stopping the bleeding.
By then Rusty had explained to the other cop what it was all about, and the cop went over to the hay head and stirred him with his foot.
‘Watch it!’ I said, still supporting Rima. ‘He’s a muggle smoker and he’s hopped to the eyeballs.’
The cop sneered at me.
‘Yeah? Think I don’t know how to handle a junky?’
The hay head came alive. He shot to his feet, snatched up a carafe of water from the bar and before the cop could dodge, he slammed it down on his head. The carafe burst like a bomb and the impact drove the cop onto his knees.
The hay head turned. His owl-like eyes found Rima who was just coming out of her faint. Holding the broken neck of the carafe like a spear, he charged at her and he really had me scared.
I was holding her and kneeling, and in that position I was helpless. If it hadn’t been for the calm cop, both she and I would have been butchered.
He let the hay head go past him, then he slammed his club down on the back of his head.
The hay head shot forward on his face, rolled away from us and the jagged neck of the bottle fell out of his hand.
The cop bent over him and snapped on the handcuffs. The other cop, cursing, leaned weakly against the bar, holding his head between his hands.
The calm cop told Rusty to call the Station House for an ambulance.
I helped Rima to her feet and sat her on a chair well away from where the hay head lay. She was shivering, and I could see the shock was hitting her. I stood by her, holding her against me while with my free hand I kept a handkerchief to my face.
In about five minutes the ambulance and a police car arrived. A couple of guys in white coats bustled in. They strapped the hay head to a stretcher and took him out, then one of them came back and fixed my face.
While this was going on, a big, red-faced plain-clothes man who had come with the ambulance and who had introduced himself as Sergeant Hammond talked to Rusty. Then he came over to Rima.
She sat limply, nursing her arm and staring at the floor.
‘Let’s have it, sister,’ Hammond said. ‘What’s your name?’
I listened because I was curious about her.
She said her name was Rima Marshall.
‘Address?’
‘Simmonds Hotel,’ naming a fifth rate joint along the waterfront.
‘Occupation?’
She glanced up at him, then away. There was a sullen expression on her face as she said, ‘I’m an extra at the Pacific Studios.’
‘Who is the junky?’
‘He calls himself Wilbur. I don’t know his other name.’
‘Why did he try to cut you?’
She hesitated for a split second.
‘We lived together once. I walked out on him.’
‘Why?’
She stared at him.
‘You saw him, didn’t you? Wouldn’t you walk out on him?’
‘Maybe.’ Hammond scowled, pushing his hat to the back of his head. ‘Well, okay. You’ll be wanted in court tomorrow.’
She got unsteadily to her feet.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yeah.’ Hammond turned to one of the cops standing by the door. ‘Drive her to her hotel, Jack.’
Rima said, ‘You’d better check with the New York police. They want him.’
Hammond’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know but they want him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’
Hammond hesitated, then shrugged. He waved to the cop.
‘Take her to her hotel.’
Rima walked out into the rain, the cop following her. I watched her go. I was a little surprised she didn’t even look at me. I had saved her life, hadn’t I?
Hammond waved me to a chair.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jeff Gordon.’
It wasn’t my real name, but a name I had been using while out in Hollywood.
‘Address?’
I told him. I had a room in a rooming-house at the back of Rusty’s bar.
‘Let’s have your version of the shindig.’
I gave it to him.
‘Do you think he meant business?’
‘If you mean was he going to kill her, I think he was.’
He blew out his cheeks.
‘Well, okay. We’ll want you in court tomorrow at eleven sharp.’ He stared at me. ‘You’d better take care of that face of yours. Have you ever seen her in here before?’
‘No.’
‘It beats me how a good looking girl like her could think of living with a rat like him.’ He grimaced.
‘Girls… thank God, I’ve got a boy.’
He jerked his head at the remaining cop, and together they went out into the rain.
II
All this I’m telling you about took place a year after Hitler’s war. Pearl Harbour seems a long way in the past now, but at that time I was twenty-one and at college, working hard to qualify as a Consulting Engineer. I was in grabbing distance of my degree when the pace of war hotted up and I couldn’t resist the call to arms. My father nearly hit the ceiling when I told him I was going to volunteer. He tried to persuade me to get my degree before joining up but the thought of another six months in college while there was fighting to be done was something I couldn’t face up to.
Four months later at the age of twenty-two I was one of the first to land on the beaches of Okinawa. I got an inch of red hot shrapnel in my face as I started towards the swaying palm trees that hid the Japanese guns, and that was the end of the war so far as I was concerned.
For the next six months I lay in a hospital bed while the plastic experts remodelled my face.
They made a reasonably good job of it except they left me with a slight droop in my right eyelid and a scar like a silver thread along the right side of my jaw. They told me they could fix that if I cared to stay with them for another three months, but I had had enough. The horrors I had seen in that hospital ward remain with me even now. I couldn’t get out fast enough.
I went home.
My father was a manager of a bank. He hadn’t much money, but he was more than ready to finance me until I had completed my studies as a consulting engineer.
To please him I went back to college, but those months in the battle unit and the months in hospital had done something to me. I found I hadn’t any more interest in Engineering. I just couldn’t concentrate.
After a week’s work, I quit. I told my father how it was. He listened, and he was sympathetic.
‘So what will you do?’
I said I didn’t know, but I did know I couldn’t settle to book work anyway for some time.