Arthurjean laughed. "You sure do make your help sing for their supper,
angel," she told me. "And just because I call you angel don't you start
worrying about that nice wife of yours. From now on, I'll make like a
sister."
So I smacked her on the porte-cochere and ordered her out of the room
until I got dressed. As the door closed behind her and Vail, I rang for
the nurse and asked to have my bags packed.
"Goodness, Mr. Tompkins," she exclaimed. "Don't you like it here? We
understood that you wanted a rest-cure."
She stood just a fraction of an inch too close to me and I was aware of
pretty brown hair under her starched nurse's cap, a whiff of something
that smelled far more expensive than antiseptic, and a pleasingly
rounded effect underneath the prim blouse of her uniform. So I put my
arm around her, gave her a friendly kiss and said, "Name, please, and
when do you get off duty?"
"Emily Post," she answered, "so help me, but don't let that stop you,
and nine o'clock tonight."
"Good," I told her. "Will you join us for dinner and a drink at--what's
the best hotel here now we've a war on?"
"The Governor Baldwin," she replied.
"Meet us at the Baldwin, then, as soon as you can get away. I'd like
you to meet my friends socially and--"
She nodded brightly and hurried from the room, with a distinctly
unmedical motion of her hips.
A moment later Dr. Folsom came lounging in, his strangler's hands
dangling at his side.
"Sorry you feel you must leave, Mr. Tompkins," he told me. "Here's that
certificate. It will stand up in any court east of the Mississippi if
you have to use it. That will be five thousand, as agreed."
I sat down at the little writing-desk and laboriously made out three
checks: one for five thousand to the order of the Sanctuary, one for
one thousand to the order of Pendergast Potter, and another for one
thousand to the order of--
"Any initials, Dr. Folsom?" I asked.
"A. J.," he replied, "but just make it to the Sanctuary."
"A. J. Folsom," I wrote on the final check and endorsed it with "W. S.
Tompkins," as well as I could with my still bandaged fingers.
"What--" Folsom was startled. "Gosh! You're a white man, Mr. Tompkins.
And Potter will be glad to have this, too. He is--"
"Think nothing of it!" I announced grandly. "The market's been working
for me all week, and this won't even cost you income-tax; I'll put it
down as a gift."
Folsom's face was positively transfigured with gratitude and a devotion
that would not have been out of place in a stained glass window.
"By George!" he insisted. "You _are_ a white man. I'd be proud to go
before the Supreme Court of the United States and testify--" He stopped
abruptly. "Are these checks good?" he inquired.
"Oh, come, doctor, who's loony now?" I demanded. "Why would I expose
myself to a bad check charge just to keep out of a private asylum with
my lawyer fully equipped with a writ?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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