afternoon, but by flourishing my Continental Detective Agency credentials and giving everybody to understand that an hour’s delay might cause thousands of deaths, or words to that effect, I got to see Myrtle Jennison.
She was in a ward on the third floor, alone. The other four beds were empty. She could have been a girl of twenty-five or a woman of fifty-five. Her face was a bloated spotty mask. Lifeless yellow hair in two stringy braids lay on the pillow beside her.
I waited until the nurse who had brought me up left. Then I held my document out to the invalid and said:
“Will you sign this, please, Miss Jennison?”
She looked at me with ugly eyes that were shaded into no particular dark color by the pads of flesh around them, then at the document, and finally brought a shapeless fat hand from under the covers to take it.