Dr. Smith sat on the edge of the bed to think things over. His left thumb probed the holes in the blanket and pillow. This seemed to make up his mind.
He got his clothes from the closet and dressed as quickly as he could force his hands to move and co-ordinate. His trousers hung so loosely that the last hole in his belt made no difference. He pulled the belt tight and knotted it.
Next, he carefully folded his sketches and put them in the inside pocket of his coat. As an after-thought, he also put the sleeping pill in his pocket. Then he drank half a glass of water and painfully edged himself out the window. His chest scraped the ledge, and it was all he could do to strangle an out-cry of pain.
At the foot of the ladder, he staggered and nearly fell. But after a moment's rest, he squared his shoulders and walked across a corner of the lawn, into the shadows and the night.
The Los Angeles Mirror-News got further than any other paper with the story of Dr. John O'Hara Smith's mysterious disappearance from General Hospital, leaving behind a bed riddled with three bullets. In fact, the Mirror-News story had cleared the copy desk and was on its way down to the composing room before it was killed by the managing editor "for security reasons".
An all-points police bulletin was sent out, but no one was optimistic about immediate results. When you can't admit a man is missing, when you can't publish his photograph, you deprive yourself of the eyes and ears of the public, which turn up seventy-five percent of the leads in missing persons cases.
Security considerations posed three alternatives:
If Dr. Smith was telling the truth, then it was better to let whoever had twice tried to kill him wonder whether the second attempt had been successful.
If Smith had broken with an espionage ring, and had been marked for death by former associates, the various agencies concerned with security wanted a chance to find him first.