“I see,” Bertha said wearily. “Well, I seem to have been whipsawed all the way around. I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about the Josephine Dell who had the accident, do you?”
“What accident?” she asked curiously.
Bertha said, “The accident that took place there on the corner by the bank building about quarter to six Friday night. The man hit this young woman with his automobile and knocked her down. She didn’t think she was hurt much, but—”
“But I’m that person,” Josephine Dell said.
The sag snapped out of Bertha Cool’s back as she jerked herself rigidly erect. “You’re what?” she asked.
“I’m that girl.”
“One of us,” Bertha announced, “is nuts.”
Josephine Dell laughed, a musical, tinkling bit of laughter. “Oh, but I am. It was the most peculiar experience. This man struck me and knocked me down, and he seemed like a very nice young man. I didn’t think I was hurt at the time, but the next morning when I got up, I began to be a little dizzy and had a headache. I called a doctor, and the doctor said it looked like concussion. He advised a complete rest and—”
“Wait a minute,” Bertha said. “Did this man drive you home?”
“He wanted to, and I decided to let him. At the time I didn’t think I was hurt at all. I just thought I’d been knocked over, and felt a little sheepish about it, because — well, after all, while I was in the right, so far as the signal was concerned. I really wasn’t watching where I was going. I had some things on my mind that day, and — well, anyway, he insisted that I must go to a hospital for a check-up; and when I refused that, he said he was going to drive me home anyway.”