“We’ll get the manager. Tell me, what happened?”

“I went to sleep, and woke up and someone was in the room. He was bending over the bed with his hand right over my nose, ready to shut off my breathing. After that awful experience of last night, I was almost paralyzed with terror. But you’d impressed on my mind what I was to do. You remember you said it didn’t make any difference whether I hit him or not. So I jerked the gun out from under my pillow, and pulled the trigger. I’d slipped the safety catch off when I went to bed. I was never so frightened in my life. That gun made such an awful bang! I thought my eardrums would burst. I dropped the gun and screamed.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then I grabbed a robe from the bed—I must have. I don’t remember doing it, but it was over my arm when I got out to the other room.”

“You ran into the other room?”

“Yes, and then into the hall.”

I said, “Well, he’s probably in there now then, unless he managed to get out through a window. There’s not one chance in ten that you hit him.”

“Oh, but I did hit him,” she said. “I heard an awful smack like a bullet would make when it hit someone,—and he fell down.”

“How do you know he fell down?”

“I heard him.”

“Did you hear him move after that?” I asked.

“Yes, I think I did. I heard something. I went completely screwy. I dashed out into the corridor and ran for the elevator just as hard as I could run. The door closed and clicked shut behind me. I stayed in the elevator for a minute, and then realized what a predicament I was in. Look, I haven’t even any slippers on.”

I looked down at her tinted toenails, and said, “Well, we’re going to have to get the manager. Don’t be frightened, Alma. It’s probably a burglar, someone who is looking for Morgan Birks’ records, or thought, perhaps, he had some money salted away. Where was Sandra all this time?”

“She went out.”

“Where was Bleatie?”

“I don’t know. In bed, I guess, in the other room.”

“And he didn’t hear the shot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look here, Alma,” I said. “Do you suppose it could have been Bleatie who—”

“What would he be doing in my room?” she asked.

I couldn’t think of any answer I wanted to put in words, so didn’t try to give one. I said, “We’ll find the manager, and—” I broke off and crowded her back into the telephone booth as a big car pulled up in front of the apartment house. “Here comes someone now,” I said. “I can mooch a coin and call police headquarters. I’d rather do that than notify the manager.”