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The Cupola

As the taxi woggled downhill, Jumbo’s words pushed past the busy clicking of the meter into Sally’s weary brain. Once inside her consciousness, they rolled around like brightly colored Christmas tree balls, and butted into each other and crashed. Far down beneath the shattering concussions her mind began reverberating:

“Think it over, think it over, think it over.”

Twice she decided to go to Bucks and then she knew it would be hopeless. They couldn’t help if a big story broke. They didn’t make the news. They ... they were like buzzards ... and she must do something to keep them ... from....

Murdering patients.... Oh God! Oh God! ... No! ... They are wrong!

She pushed her curly bright hair back from her sweating forehead, and at The Call building gave the driver the dollar, and slipped unnoticed into a crowded elevator and out again in the main hallway of the sixth floor.

This wouldn’t do. Somebody might come along.

She leaned against the wall for a moment, then decided to walk up to the seventh floor. There was a vacant suite of offices on the corner; perhaps if she went where there was plenty of room her brain would get ... wider....

Half way up the marble stairs began rising and hitting her in the face, and then slipping back so that she couldn’t quite reach them when she stepped. She slumped and rested.

If Cub’s arms were only around her now. How many murders had there been? Four! Jumbo had said four, and the last a nurse. The night he brought the last cigarettes. She hadn’t seen him since the morning after ... the nurse.... Not since Dr. Bear began dying ... but she knew! She knew!