A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

Sellers hesitated for just a moment, then spun me around and pushed me down the corridor at a run.

The wheel-chair had skidded to one side of the room and tilted over to its side. A bloodstained bandage was unwound and lying on the floor. Bertha was calmly sitting on Amelia Jasper’s shoulders, holding one leg in the grip of iron.

Amelia Jasper was kicking with the other leg, screaming and shouting for help.

Sellers shouted, “You can’t do this, Bertha. You can’t do it.”

“The hell I can’t,” Bertha said grimly. “I’ve done it. Look at the bullet hole.”

Sellers grabbed Bertha’s shoulders. “Let her up, Bertha. You can’t do that.”

Bertha said, “I tell you, I’ve done it.”

Sellers grabbed Bertha’s shoulders and tried to move her.

She gave him a push that threw him off balance, and he swung around crazily for a minute, trying to regain it.

In the doorway, Susie Irwin, the maid, stood grimly efficient, holding a blue-steel revolver. “Put your hands up, everybody,” she said.

The grim, sinister purpose of her voice knifed through to everyone’s consciousness.

“That means you, too, Sergeant,” she said. “Get ’em up.”

Sellers turned too quickly, and Susie Irwin pulled the trigger. The room was filled with sound, and Sellers, as one dazed, looked at the blood streaming down from his shattered right hand.

The grim reality of the situation suddenly impressed itself on everyone. Susie Irwin meant business.

Amelia Jasper struggled to her feet.

“Come on Amelia,” Susie said.

Amelia ran, a hobbling, one-sided gait. Quite evidently every step was painful.

Sellers tried reaching for his gun with his left hand. He couldn’t make it. Bertha Cool lumbered to her feet and charged down the corridor like a tank going into battle.

Susie Irwin stopped at the front door, turned, and took deliberate aim.

I stuck out my foot and tripped Bertha Cool. She went down with a bang that shook the house. Susie Irwin pulled the trigger, and the bullet went swishing through the air right where Bertha Cool’s ample chest would have been if I hadn’t tripped her.

The front door banged.

There was the sound of a motor.

Sergeant Sellers yelled at Bertha, “Get my gun out of the holster over on the right, put it in my left hand.”

Claire Bushnell was the one who got his gun out for him. Sellers, holding the gun in his left hand, dashed to the open front door.

He was in time to see the tail end of his police car skidding around the corner.

He stood dazed, angry and swearing. Then he turned to me, “You’re responsible for this. I’ll be the laughing stock of…”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Take these handcuffs off and start broadcasting an alarm. You’re on the verge of promotion and you’re too dumb to realise it.”

Frank Sellers glowered at me and awkwardly wrapped a handkerchief around his right wrist, using it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of his hand.

“That’s what I get for listening to you,” he said savagely.

“What is?”

“A woman has caught me with my pants down, shot me and made a getaway in my police car. I’m a hell of a looking spectacle right now.”

I caught Bertha’s eyes. “See if you can’t find him a towel to wrap around that arm, Bertha.”

“I’m doing all right,” Sellers said. “I’ll take care of myself. Get hold of a taxi, Bertha, and we’ll drive to Headquarters in that. Dammit, now I’m going to be the laughing stock of the whole department. Shot by a woman!”

I said, “Try and find a bath towel, Bertha.”

“A bath towel,” she said. “You don’t want to put anything around it. Just tie something above it the way he’s done. That handkerchief is working all right. It’ll stop the bleeding and…”

I said, “If I have to spell it out for you, try and find a bath towel that has KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT embroidered on it.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you say so,” Bertha said.

“I’m saying so now,” I told her.

Sellers said angrily, “You get me a taxicab. Hell, I’ll get one myself.”

He walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, laid it on the little table, dialled a number with his left hand, then picked up the receiver and said, “Hello, this is Police Sergeant Frank Sellers. I’m at 226 Korreander, and I want a taxi out here right away. Now rush it out here, will you?”

He waited a moment for confirmation, then grunted and slammed the receiver back into place.

Bertha, prowling around through the house, was banging doors behind her. Claire Bushnell, sympathetic and frightened, was hovering around Sergeant Sellers.

“Can I take a look at that hand?” she asked.

“Fortunately,” Sellers said, “I think it missed most of the bones except the thumb. That thumb’s pretty messy.” He turned to me and said, “I’m going to get both you and Bertha for this, Lam. Bertha pushed me off balance or I’d have—”

I said, “Bertha probably saved your life.”

He looked as though he wanted to bite my head off.

We heard Bertha’s steps coming rapidly down the corridor. Then she was triumphantly displaying a bloodstained bath-towel that had the words KOZY DELL embroidered on it in red thread.

“Here we are, lover,” she said. “I found it in a soiled clothes hamper in the bathroom. The woman certainly was careless, just threw it in the soiled clothes.”

I said. “She felt pretty certain no one would ever be here to look for it. Wrap it up in some paper, Bertha. First, better put your initials on a corner with a fountain pen so that you can testify as to where you found it.”

Sellers said, “Don’t bother. If there’s any evidence I’ll take charge of it.”

I said, “We don’t want to get any blood on it, Sergeant. You’re bleeding from that wound in your hand. We want to keep the blood that’s on there as evidence.”

He glared at me and said, “I’m not buying any more of your schemes, Donald. You’re going to Headquarters. You’re going to be booked. That’s what I should have done with you in the first place. And then, I’m going to settle an account with those two women.”

“Sure,” I said. “Newspaper reporters will be around you thick as flies: They’ll want to know all about the story of how you got shot.”

“Okay, I’ll tell them.”

I said, “Bertha saved your life. She pushed you out of the line of fire.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“About Bertha saving your life,” I said. “And if you think that’s going to look well in print, just…”

“Bertha didn’t save my life,” he yelled. “She gave me a shove that had me off balance when that hatchet-faced number took a pop at me. Bertha, if you ever lay your hands on me again, I don’t care if you are a woman, I’ll bust your damn jaw.”

“Just try it,” Bertha said, belligerently, and then added, “that is, if you feel lucky.”

I said, “All right, if you want to get tough about it, Frank, let’s put the cards right on the table. You go up to Headquarters now and you’re in the worst mess of your life. You’ve arrested me, but you can’t hold me.”

“Says you!”

“For a while,” I said, “but there’s enough evidence now so a lawyer can get me out.”

“I don’t see it,” Sellers said. “You find out that Amelia Jasper has a bullet hole in her thigh — so what?”

I said, “Okay, you haven’t got a case against her yet. But you haven’t got a case against me — not now.”

“The hell I haven’t.”

“No, you haven’t, Frank. The fact that this woman made that statement about the girl putting her hands on my face shows that she knew what happened. She was watching from outside the window.”