By the next day I was quite myself again. I had already seen the reporters, and by the exercise of persuasion and diplomacy had managed to keep the affair from being unduly exploited in the papers. The police, good fellows, were hard at work on the case, but they could hardly be expected to accomplish anything without the evidence which I did not intend to let them have. The doctors who hate to see any one escape out of their hands so easily did their best to persuade me to stop a while in the hospital and "rest" but how could I rest with so much to do outside?
Having decided that I must leave the hospital, it was a matter of considerable concern to me how this was to be effected without exposing myself to a fresh danger. I had received a disguised telephone message from English to the effect that they were waiting for me. I decided to confide in the visiting surgeon, an understanding man.
"Sir," I said, "I am a private detective. I have a gang of crooks almost ready to be rounded up. Knowing it, they are desperate. That is the explanation of the attack on me. Now the chances are that the instant I step outside the hospital I'll stop another bullet. What would you do if you were me?"
"Call on the police," he said, of course.
"I can't do that without exploding my charges prematurely."
As I said, he was an understanding man. He didn't bother me with a lot of questions, but took the case as he found it. After thinking a while, he said:
"How would it do if I had you transferred in an ambulance to my private clinic on —— Street. You see you'll be loaded on out of sight in the hospital yard here, and you will be driven right inside my place to be unloaded. You lie flat in the ambulance and no one can see inside without climbing on the step, and a surgeon sits there."
"Fine!" I said. "You're a man of resource."
He gave the order, and it was so done. Arrived at his private hospital I dressed myself in street clothes, borrowing a coat to replace my bloody one, and calling a taxi had myself carried to Oscar Nilson's shop.