“Nope, but I seen ’em telling fortunes at Coney Island.”
“You crazy? This fellow here is ’bout ten thousand jumps from a tent. Got a building with swimming pools, and roof gardens and woodwork painted green and locks on all the doors....”
“And a staff of old maid nurses and unmarried women doctors, who are always telling you ‘sex done it.’ Night-prowling alley cats, at heart. What about him?”
“His name is Hoffbein, and he’s got a little body like the tripod of a camera, without the stiffening, holding up his mentality. Got a head like a German. All front, with oriental black eyes, a controlled sissy mouth, a beaky nose, and no back.
“He slithered all over the clinic with us, and God that was gruesome! Perfectly healthy people, eating saltpetre in their food and wondering how long before they’d be nuts! And him saying, ‘Routine, as you of course know, is the basis of all recovery.’ And way down below a voice wailing ‘Rock-a-bye-baby.’
“He ain’t a man, he ain’t just a sissy, he ain’t even a human being. If you put a bullet through him, it wouldn’t even kill him.
“And he’s the thing we got to catch. He’s it!
“He’s so crazy that you ain’t sure whether he’s crazy or not. He’s the control. He’s the person who is working the Kerr women and Lil is right. And he knows I know it, too.”
“Charm it out of you?”
“After I’d seen the Surgical Clinic, and was always trying to ask intelligent questions about costs and that kind of thing to the man who is Bear Sterling’s assistant, Miss Carruthers took me to Cub Sterling and I told you about him. But I saw the Head Nurse, Miss Kerr, too. And then I knew I was right. Seen her?”