I walked out into the room.
Bertha jumped up, her eyes blazing. “Why, you damned little son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed at me. “You’ve cost me ten bucks!”
Frank Sellers threw back his head and roared with laughter. “This is good,” he said. “This really is good.”
“Why, you ungrateful little…” Bertha’s voice choked with emotion.
Claire looked at me helplessly.
I said, “It’s all right, Claire. I’m sorry. I came up the stairs. You must have been out telephoning or something. The door was open. I came in here and waited for you to come back and then the door-bell began to ring. I didn’t know who it was so I slipped in here and pulled the door shut behind me.”
Sellers said, “You must have got here just before Bertha did, then.”
“That’s right,” I said.
Sellers quit laughing. He got up off the sofa, walked over to the door and said, “Show me how you pulled this thing shut after you got in there, Lam.”
I knew I was trapped. There wasn’t any handle on the inside of the door.