The clerk said, “Well, there’s nothing I can do—”
“I thought,” I said, “that there was a faint odour of gas in the corridor.”
The affable smile dissolved from the clerk’s face. I saw his eyes get big and his face change colour. Without a word, he reached under the counter and took out a pass-key. “Come on,” he said.
We went up. The clerk tried fitting the pass-key to the door. It didn’t work. He said, “The door’s bolted from the inside.”
Bertha Cool said, “Donald, you’re thin. You could smash out the glass in that transom, and drop through, and open the door.”
I said to the clerk, “Give me a leg up.”
He said, “I’m not certain we should resort to extreme measures—”
Bertha Cool said, “Here, lover. I’ll give you a boost.”
She picked me up as though I weighed no more than a pillow. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, wadded it around my hand, and smashed in the glass of the transom. A blast of gas came out to strike me in the face.
I said to Bertha, “Slip off your shoe, and give it to me. I can hang on up here.”