Notwithstanding Sadie's violent objections (she said she had been lured to Amityville under false pretenses), I motored right back to town. I did intend to lay off for a day or two but I had to put my office in order first. It was about eight o'clock when I got back to Manhattan. I put up my car and had an excellent breakfast. I thought if I was going to be plugged it might as well be on a full stomach. I did not deceive myself as to the risk I ran in visiting my office, but it was absolutely necessary for me to secure certain papers and destroy others.
I took a taxi down and ordered the man to wait. I cleaned everything up in case the place should be entered during my absence. What papers I meant to take with me I deposited in a satchel, and took the precaution of strapping it to my wrist. Then I locked up and returned down stairs. I found that my chauffeur had moved away from the doorway a little, consequently I was exposed for a moment or two on the sidewalk.
It was sufficient. I heard that deadly little "ping" and simultaneously a sound like a slap on bare flesh. I did not know I was hit, but I fell down. Then a pain like the searing of a hot iron passed through my shoulder.
"I'm shot!" I cried involuntarily.
I realised that I was not seriously hurt. However, I had no mind to get up and make myself a target for more. I made believe to close my eyes, and lay still. My mind worked with a strange clearness. I saw the woman across the street. She was poorly dressed with a shawl over her head, but I recognised the stature and the curves of my antagonist of the night before.
The usual gaping crowd gathered. Nobody had heard the shot but me. While all eyes were directed on me the woman coolly walked away across the park, tossing the gun into the middle of a bush as she went. I said nothing. It was no part of my game to have her arrested.
I suspected that the openmouthed crowd surrounding me was full of spies, so I made out to be worse hurt than I was, groaning and writhing a little. The wound helped me out by bleeding profusely. One youth with an evil face made to take my satchel as if to relieve me. The strap frustrated his humane purpose. He was afraid to proceed further under that circle of eyes.
Somebody had telephoned for an ambulance, and presently it came clanging up with a fresh crowd in its train. The white clad surgeon bent over me.
"I am not badly hurt," I whispered to him, "but please take me away quickly out of this mob."
I was carried to Bellevue Hospital where I engaged a private room. My wound, a slight affair, was cauterised—I had in mind the possibility of poison, and dressed. Afterwards I enjoyed my first sleep in twenty-four hours. I had left instructions that no one was to be admitted to see me, and that no information regarding my condition was to be given out.