“That’s better.” The Peter Lorre voice sounded relieved. White teeth smiled above the Van Dyke. “You’ll be all right. But you must be still.”
The secretary patted my shoulder. “You had a concussion. Doctor Elm thought we’d have to take you to the hospital.”
I said, “Sure,” but it sounded like “Sewer” because I didn’t seem to have much co-ordination. Beside a huge cabinet photograph of Dow Lanerd wearing an open-necked wool shirt, a tiny gilt clock ticked away beneath the buzzing; its hands pointed to quarter to five. I compared it with my wrist watch. The clock was two minutes slow. I’d been out more’n an hour!
The doctor stirred stuff in a glass. “This’ll take some of that fuzziness off your tongue.”
I drank it. Poor substitute for lager.
“What was it?” I put my hand up to my head, found it turbaned with a rubber bandage. The back of my neck was cool and damp where the compress had leaked down.
Ruth held up a beautifully grained piece of wood about eighteen inches tall, a carved statue, all sinuous thighs and pointed breasts, tapering down to a sort of fishtail base. Kind of thing you see in a jeweler’s window on a black velvet background. Very arty. “This was on the floor beside you, Mister Vine, when I came back from the delicatessen.”
The doctor replaced paraphernalia in his bag. “Your Panama saved you. The statuette apparently hit you squarely in the back of the head, where the sweatband cushioned the blow sufficiently to prevent a skull fracture.”
I told him the hat had been repaying a just debt; I’d ransomed it often enough at checkrooms. I began to feel halfway human. The buzzing died away some. “Who crowned me?”
Ruth exclaimed, “We were waiting for you to tell us!”