Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Careless Kitten

“Yes, oh, yes! Is he going to live? Is he conscious? Is he...”

“Of course he is, and you can go up if you want.”

Tragg moved along at Helen Kendal’s side. The nurse looked at him inquiringly.

“Lieutenant Tragg. The police,” Tragg explained.

“Oh, yes.”

“I came to get the bullet.”

“You’ll have to talk with Dr. Rosllyn. He’ll be down from the operating room very shortly.”

Tragg said to Helen Kendal, “I hate to butt in on this, but I’ve got to ask him a question if the doctor thinks he can answer it.”

“He’s conscious,” the nurse said. “They used a spinal anesthetic.”

Helen Kendal looked up at him pleadingly as they reached the elevator. “Aren’t you more interested in that bullet, Lieutenant? That’s awfully important. You know doctors are sometimes careless. He might throw it away or lose it — or something — unless you went right up.”

Tragg burst out laughing. “All right, you win. Go in and see him alone. But don’t get him tired, because I’m coming down in just a minute to talk to him.”

The nurse frowned. “He’s full of hypos, you understand, Lieutenant. He’s groggy, and you can’t rely too much on what he says.”

“I know,” Tragg said. “I only want to ask him a couple of simple questions. What floor is the operating room?”

“Eleven. Mr. Templar is on the fourth. I’ll show Miss Kendal the way.”

Tragg gave Helen an imperceptible nudge when the elevator stopped at the fourth floor. Then he turned to the nurse. “Couldn’t you let Miss Kendal find Mr. Templar’s room by herself, and take me up to the operating room?”

“Why, yes. His room is 481 — just down the corridor.”

“She can find it.”

Helen flashed Tragg a grateful glance. “Thanks,” she breathed, and sped down the corridor.

The elevator door slid shut, and the cage started on its upward journey.

“What are his chances?” Tragg asked.

The nurse shook her head. “I wouldn’t know.”

At the eleventh floor, she led the way to the operating room. Dr. Rosllyn, stripped to the waist, was drying his arms on a towel.

“Lieutenant Tragg,” the nurse announced.

“Oh, yes, Lieutenant. Got that slug for you. What the devil did I do with it? Miss Dewar, where’s the bullet?”

“You put it in a tray, Doctor, and said you didn’t want it touched.”

“Damn it,” Rosllyn said, “bet I put some bandages in on top of it. Here, wait a minute... Here, come this way.”

He led the way into a room which opened off the operating room. The peculiar acrid smell of blood assailed Tragg’s nostrils. A nurse pulled blood-soaked bits of cloth from an enameled container, handed it, not to Tragg, but to the doctor. The doctor took a pair of forceps, reached in, and pulled out a red stained chunk of metal. “Here you are, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks. You’ll have to swear that this is the bullet you took from the body of Jerry Templar, you know.”

“Sure, this is the one.”

Tragg turned the bullet over. “Make some identifying mark on the base here so you’ll know it again.”

The doctor took out his pocket knife, scratched three parallel lines on the base of the bullet, then put crosses on each line. Tragg slipped the bullet in his vest pocket.

“How are his chances?” he asked.

“Pretty good, so far. I’d have given him fifty-fifty before I started working on him. I’ll give him nine out of ten now. Barring complications, he’ll be all right. Strong, rugged type. That Army training does wonders for ’em, Lieutenant. That lad has the stamina of a billygoat. Came through the operation in fine shape.”

“All right for me to talk with him for just a minute?”

“I think so. He’s full of dope, of course. Don’t tire him, and don’t ask him complicated questions. Simple things that he can hold his mind to. He’ll start rambling if you let him keep on talking, but if you hold his mind to it and ask him simple questions, he’ll give you the answers. Don’t have any stenographer there, though. Some of his talk will be rambling and an isolated answer or two may be incorrect.”

“All right,” Tragg said. “Now, if there’s any change, I want to know about it. And if it looks bad, I’ll want to get a death-bed statement.”

Dr. Rosllyn laughed. “I don’t think you’re going to have the chance. That boy wants to live. He’s nuts over some girl or other, and, until I put him under with a whiff of gas, was rambling on how glad he was he got shot because that way he found out how much she loves him! Can you beat it? The only thing that’s bothering him is that the bullet knocked him over and he couldn’t get the man who did it. All right, Lieutenant, let me know when you want me to be a witness and identify that bullet.”

Lieutenant Tragg made his way down to the fourth floor, tip-toed down the corridor to 481, gently pushed open the door.

A nurse was standing in the far corner of the room. Helen Kendal, self-conscious and embarrassed, was seated on a chair by the foot of the bed. “I’m so glad,” she was saying as Lieutenant Tragg opened the door.

Jerry Templar frowned at the new interruption standing in the doorway.

Tragg smiled at him cheerfully. “Hello! You don’t feel much like talking now, but I’ve got a couple of questions to ask you. Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide.”

Templar closed his eyes, let the lids flutter open, looked at Tragg for a moment as though having some difficulty getting his eyes in focus, then grinned back and said, “Shoot!”

“Not twice in the same night,” Tragg protested. “Now you answer as briefly as you can, because you’re not supposed to talk much.”

Jerry nodded.

“Who fired the shots?” Tragg asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Could you see anything at all?”

“Just a little motion — a blurred figure moving.”

“Tall or short?”

“Couldn’t say... a corner of the room moved, then came the shots.”

“Could this person have been shooting at Helen instead of you?”

That thought galvanized Templar into hard-eyed attention. “How’s that? Shooting at Helen?”

“Could that have been the case?”

“Don’t know. Can’t think that out. Yes... yes... might have. I never...”

“I’m sorry, but the patient mustn’t be excited,” came a droning voice from the nurse in the corner.

Lieutenant Tragg looked at Helen Kendal’s proudly stiff figure, thought of the baffled, thwarted expression on Templar’s face as he opened the door. He grinned at the nurse, and said, “Sister, I’ve been talking with the doctor, and I can tell you right now you’re in the right church, but in the wrong pew. This shooting, mysterious as it is, has started to clear up some mighty important things that would get all cleared up once and for all if you’d just relax and go and get yourself a cup of coffee. I may not know a darn thing about medicine, but I know something of human nature, and if you’d get out of here for about five minutes and leave these two people alone, it would do your patient more good than anything in the world. He was telling the doctor all about it during the operation. Why not give him a chance to tell her about it now?”

The nurse glanced at Templar, then her garments rustled as she moved quietly around the foot of the bed toward the door.

Lieutenant Tragg said, “Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

“You only have a minute,” the nurse warned Helen Kendal.

Tragg held the door open for the nurse, caught the glint of Helen Kendal’s eyes, and pushed the door shut behind him. “Give her as long as you can,” he said to the nurse.

She walked with him down toward the elevator. “You certainly spoke your piece.”