The Patient in Room 18 · Chapter 4 (1/2)

IV

A Yellow Slicker and Other Problems

The slow words beat their way into my brain like so many dull little hammers. I opened my mouth, tried to say something, but could not seem to make him hear, felt curiously sick and dizzy, had a flashing memory of the first time I served in the operating room and all at once the table before me began to waver, the room whirled, and a great black blanket overwhelmed me.

Then, without any interval at all, I found myself lying on the couch in the inner office. I still felt sick but my face was wet and cold and my uniform damp around my shoulders and someone was saying in a dull voice: “Dr. Letheny is dead⁠—Dr. Letheny is dead.”

“All right now, Miss Keate?” inquired a voice anxiously.

Wearily I opened my eyes, saw a gray arm and met the gaze of a pair of clear gray eyes. Instantly my head cleared. I pushed away the supporting arm and sat up, feeling automatically for my cap, though my hands shook.

“That was beastly to shock you so,” Lance O’Leary was saying with honest contrition. “I hope you’ll forgive me, Miss Keate, I’m really awfully sorry.”

“Did you say⁠—Dr. Letheny is dead?” I asked, bringing out the words with the peculiar difficulty that one experiences in dreams.

“He is dead,” he answered gravely.

“Not⁠—not⁠—Tell me how he died.”

“Are you sure you can stand it? You’ve got to know sometime.”

“Go on,” I said, bracing myself.

“He has been dead for more than twelve hours. He was in the closet in Room 18.” He paused, regarding me doubtfully, but at my horrified gesture continued: “He had received a blow of some kind. It fractured his skull. He must have died immediately.”

“Wait.” Rising I walked to the window, stared with unseeing eyes at the rain-drenched landscape, found my palms were stinging under the pressure of my fingernails, unclinched my hands, clinched them again and turned to face O’Leary. It was true that I had felt no fondness for Dr. Letheny⁠—but I had often worked at his side.

“I say, Miss Keate,” Lance O’Leary was protesting boyishly, “I’m awfully sorry to have been so brutal about it. But you see, I had to know whether this was news to you or not. Someone locked that closet door, you know. And in my business we suspect everything⁠—everybody⁠—the very walls themselves.”

I was too deeply shocked to be indignant at the lack of compliment in his implication; after a moment he continued.

“There is nothing more for you to help me with now,” he said. “We just found Dr. Letheny’s body this afternoon when we pried the closet door off its hinges. I examined everything at once, called the ambulance, and now the room can be cleaned and used again. The only reminder you will have of all this, I hope, is that I shall likely be about more or less for a few days⁠—or longer. That depends upon the luck I have.” He smiled again. Evidently he was trying to be as considerate as possible and I found myself liking him. “Of course, there will have to be a coroner’s inquest, but that is merely a matter of form and need not annoy you. That is all now, thank you, Miss Keate. Can’t you take some rest? Do you have night duty again tonight?”

“Yes,” I answered the last question. “Mr. O’Leary, do you have any idea as to who⁠—who has done this?”

His face sobered instantly.

“No,” he said simply. “Will you help me find out?”

“Yes.” I spoke very thoughtfully. “It is only right and just to do so.”

“Thank you.” He seemed sincere. “You may be interested to know that you have helped me already.”

“Helped you! How? There was nothing I told you⁠—”

“I’ll see you again, Miss Keate. By the way, I am leaving one or two policemen about tonight. It may help to steady some of the nerves in St. Ann’s.” He opened the door and before I knew it I was in the main hall with my question still unanswered.

I still felt ill and weak from shock, and it was fortunate that the exigencies of the situation demanded action. That was the only saving feature of these fearful days; we were all so busy that we had little time for brooding.

The news could not be kept from the nursing staff, of course, though I hoped that we could keep it from the patients, many of whom had been directly under Dr. Letheny’s care. And there was Corole⁠—in common decency I must go to her.

I snatched somebody’s slicker from the rack near the main door and turned into the corridor leading to the south wing, intending to slip out the south door and along the path to Corole’s cottage, it being much closer that way.

In the corridor I met Dr. Balman.

“I have heard,” I said briefly. “I am going to see Corole.”

He nodded.

“At the request of the Board of Directors I shall take Dr. Letheny’s place⁠—temporarily at least. I have just called a meeting of the whole nursing staff, Miss Keate. You were with Mr. O’Leary so I did not disturb you. I told them of the situation, gave orders that this thing must not get to the ears of the patients, suspended training classes for a few days, and doubled the number of girls on duty in the various wings and wards until we get a working routine established. I find that the girls are nervous over being alone.” He spoke very calmly, but his extreme pallor caught my eye.

“You had better get some rest, Dr. Balman. And have that bruise on your cheek attended to⁠—it looks bad.”

He passed his hand over the bruise.

“I bumped it while running through the apple orchard last night. I wasted no time after I talked to Miss Day over the telephone.”

“Oh⁠—then you came by the side road?”

“Yes. Thought I’d save time by not going around by the main entrance. I didn’t expect this.” He fingered the spot cautiously.

“Put iodine on it,” I advised.

“I’ll sleep here in the hospital for a while,” he said. “I’ll be there on the couch in the inner office. So if there is anything wanted I shall be right here.”

I nodded approvingly and went on, but while hurrying through the corridor I became conscious of something about the casual sentences that affected me disagreeably. What was it? Ah! “I bumped it while running through the apple orchard.” To be sure he had followed the words immediately with a very reasonable explanation, but wasn’t that in itself suspicious! On the other hand, however, I had been quite sure that the man with whom I collided had been Jim Gainsay.

Well, there was no way to make sure. And I resolved that I must not allow myself to become suspicious of anything and everything. The affair was strain enough on one’s nerves as it was, without adding the horror of suspecting one’s nearest associates.

Immersed in my own not too pleasant thoughts I passed the door of Room 18 without seeing it, an occurrence that I was to find unusual. On the porch stood a policeman, his broad back to the door, but he made no effort to stop me when I descended the steps. Once in the path the trees dripped steadily on my head, the wind blew the light slicker so that it was difficult to hold it around me, and I bent my head and ran through the damp welter of leaves and small sticks, with the branches of the trees sweeping so low as to brush my hair and cap, and the shrubbery reaching out thorny twigs to clutch at my white skirt. It was shadowy there in the orchard and the hospital soon disappeared behind the intervening shrubbery and trees and gray mist. It was nearing five o’clock by that time and already growing dark so that the path was not an altogether agreeable place in which to linger.

I turned another little bend that sloped rapidly down to the bridge and almost ran into a tall figure that was leaning upon the railing. At my startled exclamation it turned to face me. It was Jim Gainsay, a sodden hat pulled low over his eyes and the collar of his capacious tweed coat turned up. He was smoking (it was a pipe I noted, thinking of the cigarette case) and casting pebbles across the water, which is not a rainy day pastime.

“Oh. It’s you.” I said.

“Miss Keate! Say, you are the very person I’ve been wanting to see. Can you tell me something of poor old Louis?”

“Louis? Oh, you mean Dr. Letheny.” I suppose I paled a little at the name. At any rate Gainsay glanced sharply at me.

“I didn’t mean to⁠—disturb you,” he said apologetically. “You see, I only heard of it an hour or so ago, and only what that fellow O’Leary told me. Don’t talk if you would rather not.”

“Then I know no more than you, for the detective, Mr. O’Leary, told me of it, too. Of course, it was a shock.”

Jim Gainsay nodded, his gaze again on the little stream that, swollen by the night’s rain, swept in a bubbling current almost to our feet.

“Poor old Louis,” he muttered.

“You have known him a long time?” I said absently, my eyes too on the water.

“Since university days,” said Jim Gainsay slowly. “I always liked Louis though I can’t say I understood him; no one ever did. In the last few years I have seen him only a few times. It was terrible to⁠—go like that. Do they have any idea as to who⁠—who killed him?”

“Not that I know of,” I said and shivered at the thought of the black night so recently past and of the unknown and ghastly presence that Room 18 had held. And I had taken that futile little candle and searched the room for the thing that some sixth sense warned me was there! I shivered again and caught my breath and Jim Gainsay turned to me again.

“Don’t let me keep you out here in the storm. You are cold in that slicker thing.”

“A little. I am going to see Corole. How does she take it?”

Jim Gainsay’s frown deepened.

“I hardly know. I can’t understand her any better than I could understand Louis. She looked⁠—sort of bad⁠—this morning. Tired, you know. And kept saying Louis would return. But she was terribly nervous. Prowled over the house like a cat.” He shrugged in distaste. “Fairly gave me the creeps to watch her. Then when they came up to the house to tell her that⁠—that they had found him she just sort of froze all up. Hardly said a word.”

“Wasn’t she dreadfully shocked?”

“Well⁠—I don’t know. You never can tell how Corole is feeling or what she is thinking about. Of course, she and Louis sort of got on each other’s nerves a little. That is⁠—you know what I mean⁠—” He glanced at me uncertainly.

“I know.”

“I suppose St. Ann’s is awfully upset?”

“We are trying to keep everything going as well as possible. It is a bad situation, naturally. The nurses are doing their best but there is a sort of undercurrent of hysteria.” My mind on Corole, I did not immediately note where his inquiries were leading.

“Miss Day was with you in the south wing last night, was she not?” He knocked his pipe carefully against the railing.

“Yes.”

“How⁠—er⁠—Is she feeling any bad effects from the fright?”

“I have seen her only for a few moments at lunch,” I replied; at another time I should have smiled at his elaborately impersonal air.

“I⁠—don’t suppose I could see her? For a little while?”

“She will be free between six and seven o’clock. But we are allowing no visitors for a few days⁠ ⁠…” My voice trailed doubtfully into space.

“But see here, Miss Keate, I⁠—it is important that I see her.” He spoke rather defiantly as if he dared me to ask why. “Will you carry a note to her, then?”

Well, I was willing to carry a note to Maida, so I shivered under the folds of the flapping slicker while he stood with his back to the rain and wind, scribbling hastily on a bit of yellowish paper he pulled from his pocket. He held the paper close to him to protect it from the rain but I noted that it was an unused Western Union telegraph blank.

“There, and thank you, Miss Keate.” He handed me the folded scrap of paper and I slipped it into my pocket.

But at the end of the bridge I turned.

“Why, Mr. Gainsay,” I exclaimed. “I had forgotten. You were to leave this morning!”

His face had lost the youthful look with which he had begged me to take the note to Maida, and had become lined again, and his narrowed eyes were unfathomable under that shadowy hat brim.

“I shall not go for a few days,” he said after a barely perceptible pause. “I can scarcely leave at such a time. Louis was a friend. They have no relatives here. Corole needs someone.”

His disjointed explanation did not please me. I restrained a rather obvious remark as to chaperonage; after all, Huldah was a militant and vigorous enough chaperon to suit the most meticulous Mrs. Grundy.

I daresay, however, that my disapproval was apparent in my expression, for Jim Gainsay added hastily:

“My boat doesn’t sail till next week.”

“Your boat?”

“I’m to sail on the Tuscania.”

“Oh,” I said flatly, and there being nothing further I took my way on around the hill.

The Letheny cottage looked cold and grim as I approached it. Puddles stood along the turf path; the flowers were beaten down by the wind and leaves had blown all over the porch. Huldah answered the bell, her eyes red and swollen and the cap that Corole had forced her to adopt hanging dejectedly over one ear.

“Miss Keate!” she cried. “And so wet!” She took my slicker, holding it so it could not drip on the rug. “Oh, Miss Keate! Such a t’ing! Such a t’ing!” It is only when Huldah is tremendously moved that she forgets her digraphs.

“Yes, it is dreadful, Huldah,” I said. “How is Miss Corole?”

Huldah shrugged her heavy shoulders oddly.

“There she is, in the study.” She motioned toward the door without answering my question and then followed me, her china-blue eyes curious and round like a rabbit’s between their pink rims.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Corole with not very flattering indifference. “For Heaven’s sake, Huldah, take that wet coat to the kitchen. And close the door behind you,” she added viciously. “I suppose you came to offer sympathy,” she went on, moving a pillow to a more comfortable position under her arm. She was half-lying, half-sitting on the big davenport. A fire had been built in the fireplace but had burned down to a few sullen ashes with a red gleam here and there. There was no light in the room beyond the gray, rainy dusk from the windows.

Corole’s hair was disarranged a little from its usual flat gold waves, and her eyes had great dark circles under them, and her face in the ghostly gray light was sallow and drawn. But she was gowned in a coppery-green silk thing that clung smoothly to her rather luxuriant curves. A heavily embroidered Chinese scarf, whose usual place, I recalled, was on the long table near her, had been flung over her feet and somehow, I presume because she glanced obliquely at it and reached surreptitiously to rearrange it, I got the impression that she had hastily flung it over her feet as I came into the room.

“Yes,” I replied gravely. “I am very sorry that this thing has happened.”

“Oh, of course, it is terrible,” she agreed quickly. “The whole thing is simply unspeakable.”

There was little for us to say; I offered the usual remarks; Corole told me that Dr. Letheny’s body would be sent to New Orleans for burial with others of the family and thanked me perfunctorily for my offers of assistance.

“Jim Gainsay is staying on for a few days,” she said. “Nice of him but I really don’t see what he can do.” There was a faint ring of resentment in her voice that surprised me. Corole was not a woman to resent masculine company.

“I suppose Huldah is making you comfortable?” I said for lack of something better.

“Oh, yes,” replied Corole discontentedly. “She does as well as usual. She was awfully upset about all this. Jumps every time I speak to her.”

“Would you like someone to come and stay with you for a few days?”

“No,” said Corole sharply. “No. Why should I?”

“Oh⁠—in case of anything⁠—er⁠—happening. I should think you would be a little nervous.” My explanation sounded somewhat lame and I recalled that Corole actually had no idea of the things we had gone through last night.⁠ ⁠… A swift recollection of that shallow, locked closet in Room 18 came to me and I arose suddenly, moved to another chair, and tried to think of something else.