And then went back to wait by Ruth, in case she should recover consciousness before the ambulance came.
But I'd sat there only a few minutes, and hadn't heard any sirens yet, when the phone rang. I answered it and—
Now hold on to your hat, Perry. Here comes the incredible part. It was the city jail, wanting Ruth Fleck. When I'd convinced them that she couldn't come to the phone but I'd take any message, I was told that I should tell her that her husband was dead. He had been killed—strangled, mind you—by a man in the same double cell with him. Fleck had given himself up and was being held on suspicion of theft. His killer was (or had been) a harmless moron who was being held overnight because he'd made a false confession of murder. He was unable to give any coherent account of why he'd killed Fleck; he talked about laughter, and devils, and the police not believing him. Although they'd known the man was slightly unbalanced mentally, he'd always been completely harmless, and they'd thought nothing of putting another prisoner in the same cell with him.
That was all I could learn; tomorrow I'll see what more I can learn, and I hope it's something that will make things make sense. I hate coincidences, and it takes a lot to make me believe in one. Especially one as extravagant as a man getting himself strangled to death on the same night his wife would, except for my intervention, have been strangled to death—and not by the same strangler.
The man at the jail said Ray'd given himself up. I can't see him doing that, on any charge, unless he had some damned good reason for wanting to be in jail.
Maybe the story will come out somehow, or maybe we'll never know. Ray Fleck can't tell us his end of it. Nor the psychopath his end.
For that reason only, I'm sorry I killed him. That is, I guess I am. I might have been able to subdue him without killing him, but it would have taken time. And besides there was the risk of my losing the fight. What if he'd been able to get in a lucky punch and knock me out? He'd have strangled me while I was unconscious—and then he'd have gone back to Ruth. Neither of us would have been alive right now. No, I couldn't have taken that chance.
Ruth was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital, and they gave her a sedative so she'd stay that way a while, or rather so the unconsciousness would blend into normal sleep.
So I haven't talked to her yet. They told me she should have at least a few hours of normal sleep, and kicked me out. I can go back at five A.M.
So I have a couple of hours to kill and that's what I'm doing now, writing this.