“Last night. During the Battle of Roses.” Snod’s reply came through the darkness with confirmation.
“Then I ditched Miss Carruthers and went back to the Psychiatric Clinic and into Hoffbein’s office before anybody realized I was there. He was sitting in a room with bare walls, at a bare desk, and when he looked up and saw me, he almost lost his ‘control.’
“He looks up and his eyes lost their whites like a horse, and he says slow, ‘So.’
“‘Yep!’ I said, ‘You’re right.’
“Then I walked over and sat down in a chair beside his desk, and we looked at each other and he tried to make me feel like the furniture in the room was melting and running together and so I says:
“‘I know the multiplication tables well as Kim did, Doc. The last person who tried that hypnotizing stunt on me was the head of a snowbird ring at Atlantic City. She is making dresses in the Federal Pen in Atlanta, now. What about Miss Kerr?’
“He turned red like a cooked beet and then he switched his head like a sparrow and says:
“‘Miss Kerr is a nurse in this hospital and a very trusted person. Your name? Real name?’
“‘Don’t matter a tinker’s damn, Doc! Miss Kerr was a patient of yours some years ago and you used to hypnotize her to put her to sleep and this doll, the doll which is always left by the murderer in Medicine Clinic, was found in her desk and you knew it yesterday. What about Miss Kerr?’
“He looked kind of scared a minute and then he turned on me confidentially and says: