Bertha guided him through the door of the connecting bath, helped him off with the woman’s clothes, piloted him around the room until he had the general lay of things, left his cane by his bed where he could reach it, and then said, “Well, sleep tight. I’ll go grab some shut-eye.”
She walked through the connecting bathroom, closed the door, listened for a moment, then grabbed her hat and coat, moved cautiously across the room, tiptoed down the corridor to the elevator, and ten minutes later was tearing madly along the road to Los Angeles.
It wasn’t until she had passed Pomona that she suddenly realized she was doing exactly what Jerry Bollman had been doing some twenty-four hours previously — and probably for the same purpose. And now Jerry Bollman was stretched out on a slab.
Chapter XXVI
Dim-out regulations were in effect. At the crest of the hill Bertha snapped her lights over to dim parking and crawled along at a conservative fifteen miles an hour. She swung her car in close to the curb, shut off the motor, and listened. She could hear nothing save the little night noises which had not as yet been frightened into silence: the chirping of crickets; the shrill chorus of frogs; and several other mysterious, unidentified noises of the night which are never heard near the more populous centers.
Bertha produced her pocket flashlight. By the aid of the weird, indistinct illumination, as intangible as pale moonlight, she found her way up the walk to the house.
The bungalow loomed suddenly before her, a dark silhouette. She followed the walk with the guide rail running along it, came to the porch, climbed the steps, and paused. The door was tightly closed. This would be the work of the officers. Bertha wondered whether it had been locked.
She tried the knob. The door was locked.
Bertha’s flashlight showed her, after some difficulty in getting it properly centered, that there was no key on the inside of the door. The police then must have put on a night latch or have closed and locked the door.
Bertha had a bunch of skeleton keys in her purse. She knew they constituted a dangerous possession, but they frequently came in very handy, and Bertha was not one to hesitate over something she wanted badly enough.