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

“… not that Huldah would be any good if something did happen,” Corole was saying. “She would simply pull the covers over her head and shriek. But there’s Jim.” She added the last name grudgingly as if to say, “such as he is,” and lapsed into silence.

“I must get back to the hospital,” I said presently, not seeing that my presence was vital to Corole.

“I don’t suppose they have any idea as to what happened to the radium,” she observed casually as I arose.

“No. I don’t know what to think.”

“It would seem natural to believe that whoever killed Mr. Jackson and⁠—er⁠—Louis⁠—did so in order to get the radium.”

“So it would seem,” I agreed. “For my part, I have not had time to speculate on possibilities. It is⁠—too shocking.”

“Don’t you think that they will try to trace the radium?”

“I don’t think anything about it,” I replied caustically. Her interest in the radium annoyed me. I felt repelled at her callous lack of grief. Suppose she and Dr. Letheny had not been on the best of terms, nevertheless they were cousins and housemates.

“Well,” she kept on, “it all seems very strange. Didn’t you see or hear a thing while all that was going on?” Her catlike eyes, whose pupils shone large and flat and black in the semi-twilight, flickered over me with interest.

“No,” I said shortly. I did not relish being questioned by Corole Letheny. “If there is nothing I can do for you I am going.”

“No need to be in a hurry,” she said indolently, yawning a little as she moved with a luxuriant stretching of muscles to a more comfortable position among the cushions.

“Good night,” I said curtly. “And do have some light!” As I spoke I reached abruptly for the lamp cord, pulled it, and the green light fell on the davenport.

Corole sprang upright with a startled half word, clutched the Chinese scarf and pulled it more securely over her feet.

“Good night,” I said again and left.

Huldah was waiting in the hall. As I took my coat it seemed to me that there was something hesitant in her attitude, as if she wanted to speak to me, but I was in a hurry and furthermore in no mood to condole with her. So I threw the slicker over my shoulders and splashed along the sodden path.

I scarcely noticed the rain, however, nor the cold discomforts of the path. When I entered the south wing and slipped quietly along its hushed length, I was still rotating in my mind a certain question.

When the light had flashed on there in Dr. Letheny’s study, I had caught a brief but distinct view of Corole’s slippers. They were beautiful pumps, high-heeled bronze kid with dainty, cut-steel buckles. But they were mud-stained and sodden with moisture and had wet leafmold clinging to them.

Where had Corole Letheny gone that afternoon? What errand had been so urgent that she had gone out of the house through the rain and storm in such haste that she had not had time to remove those dainty slippers?

Facing my own white, tired face in the mirror, I pushed my loosened hair together, removed little torn pieces of leaves from it and righted my cap. My shoes were soaked, so I changed them. Premonitory pangs of neuralgia began to shoot over my left temple, and I wished that I had not stood so long in the rain talking to Jim Gainsay.

With the thought came memory of the note with which I had been entrusted and I planned to give it to Maida at dinner; the bell was just ringing for the meal, then.

In my abstraction I had worn the borrowed slicker to my room; as I started down to the dining room I threw it over my arm. Idly wondering whose coat I had appropriated I ran my hand into a pocket, drawing out a man’s handkerchief. It was large and white and had no distinguishing marks on it. But there was a faint scent⁠—I pressed the square of linen to my nose, sniffed⁠—and sniffed again with quickened interest. Faint but unmistakable, the scent of ether emanated from its folds.

I stopped midway on the stairs, stared at the thing and deliberately went through the other pockets. There was nothing more to be found; no identifying label or initials on the whole garment.

One yellow slicker is very much like another, and search though I did I found no means of discovering its owner. I felt, however, that I should like to have the ether smell clinging to that handkerchief explained. Possibly if I returned it to the rack and watched to see who came for it I should learn, at least, the identity of its owner. Thinking that no one would call for it during the dinner hour, the quietest time of the whole day, I replaced the handkerchief and hung the slicker on the hook from which I had taken it, and went down to dinner. But when I returned some fifteen minutes later, after hurrying over my dinner, the slicker was gone and I had not the faintest idea as to who had removed it.

I gave the note from Jim Gainsay to Maida when I met her in the hall outside the dining room and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing her crimson vividly as she read it. The crimson, however, was succeeded by a pallor that went to her lips as she finished reading the few sentences, and during the meal she kept her eyes steadfastly on her plate and ate practically nothing. And shortly after dinner, happening to be standing near an east window, I saw a slim, shadowy figure, crowned in a white cap, winding its way into the apple orchard. Something after seven o’clock, when I was catching forty winks in my own room, Maida came in. The soft frame of black hair around her face had little beads of mist caught in it and I did not doubt that Jim Gainsay had succeeded in seeing her.

She did not mention him, however, but fussed around the room for a while, playing with the manicure things I had left on the dressing-table top, flipping through the leaves of the last Surgical News, and generally behaving as a woman does whose thoughts are elsewhere. She even picked up my tool kit, commenting on the curved bandage scissors and shining forceps and playing idly with the tiny plunger of my own hypodermic set.

We said nothing of the affair of the previous night; it was too recent, its developments too terrifying; we were both, I suppose, unconsciously fortifying ourselves against the ordeal of the coming second watch, which the memory of the last was not calculated to make easier.

Maida had two crimson spots on her cheeks⁠—from the walk in the rain, I judged⁠—but her eyes had slender purple shadows under them, her hands, usually so steady, fluttered a little over the tools she was fingering, she either spoke too rapidly of some trivial matter or lapsed into silence, and when someone passing coughed suddenly Maida started visibly, the pupils of her eyes darkened swiftly, and she cast a quick, apprehensive glance over her shoulder toward the door.

But since it was only to be expected that we both show the strain of the last twenty-four hours, I thought nothing of her evident uneasiness.

She had not been in the room more than half an hour when I was called to the third-floor telephone. The connection was poor and it took a few moments to find that it was Miss Neil who was wanted, and when I returned to my own room Maida had gone and I did not see her again until we met in the south wing at twelve o’clock.

Contrary to our unacknowledged apprehensions, second watch that night went much the same as on other nights. The electric lights had finally been repaired, though the utmost illumination was little enough to suit my taste. Just in front of the south door a policeman, tipped perilously back in his chair, slumbered spasmodically and I must say that, though he was no beauty, he was a most agreeable sight.

Fortunately for our piece of mind, it was a busy night. We actually needed the extra help, Olma Flynn and a student nurse, and the two extra uniforms, here and there about the wing, made it seem a little less silent and ghostly.

Along about two o’clock Sonny’s light went on and I answered it.

“Why, hello, Miss Keate,” he said, as I turned on the light above his bed. “You haven’t been in to see me since last night.”

Was it only last night?

“I’ve been busy, Sonny,” I replied. “How is the cast doing?”

“It was pretty bad last night.” He moved a little to ease his tired body. “It is better tonight, though. Quite a lot more comfortable. What happened last night, Miss Keate? I heard somebody scream.”

“One of the girls had a little fright.” I made my explanation casually but Sonny’s gaze remained puzzled.

“Today has been so queer, too. So many people in and out and strange footsteps past the door. And this afternoon, about two o’clock, they shut all the doors and I heard the wheels of a truck being taken along the corridor. Did⁠—did one of the patients die, Miss Keate?”

When I can’t tell the truth I made it a rule to tell as near the truth as possible.

“One of the patients died, Sonny. He was an old gentleman.”

“Oh,” said Sonny, eyeing me doubtfully. I reached over to straighten his sheets. Through long hours of suffering, of lying helpless in bed and being at times rather nearer the other world than this, Sonny has developed a highly sensitive intuition.

“Oh,” he said again. He was not satisfied but had good manners. “Did you have a nice time at the party?” he asked cheerfully.

“At the party⁠—Why, no, Sonny. It⁠—er⁠—wasn’t a very nice party. It was too hot.”

“I guess Miss Day didn’t get time to come in and tell me about it. I looked for her. But she must have been too busy.”

“But I thought⁠—” I checked myself abruptly, continuing: “Maybe she will come in to see you tonight. What is it you wanted, Sonny?”

“Just a fresh drink, please. And would you change my pillows?”

I brought the fresh drink and made him as comfortable as possible.

So Maida had not been in to see Sonny last night after all! And she had volunteered the information, I remembered; I had not even asked for it. I deliberated over the matter for some time before I came to the reluctant conclusion that only an affair of importance would have brought Maida to the point of telling a deliberate lie. Which conclusion did not lighten my state of mind.

The night didn’t go so well after that.

From midnight until four o’clock are the dreaded hours of St. Ann’s regime. They are gray, cold, dreary hours⁠—hours when pulses lag most feebly, when the breath comes most wearily, when life seems a burden that is all too easily escaped and the other world seems so near that the nurse must cling to her patients with all her will to keep them from making that quiet, easy journey. It is one of the demands of our profession that the most is asked of our strength at a time when it is at its lowest ebb.

Last night there had been two dead men in our wing⁠—and dead by another’s hands. Whose hand had it been?

Somehow during those black hours in that hushed and shadowy wing the thing that struck me with the most horror, that brought my heart, quivering, to my throat and gooseflesh all up my arms, was the memory of that locked closet.

Dead men can’t walk. Dead men can’t carry keys. Dead men can’t lock doors.

Who had locked that door? We must believe that it was some intruder, someone outside our little circle at St. Ann’s. And surely the police had searched the place and that fearful intruder could not still be about, hidden in some recess of the dark old halls and passageways.

And yet⁠—who would be familiar with the plan of St. Ann’s? Who would know that the radium was in use? Who, indeed, would know of its value?

Eleven’s signal light clicked and I hastened to answer, putting down the chart at which I had been staring without even seeing its red temperature line.

I found Eleven in a chill, which was followed, as I expected, by a raging fever under which he grew steadily delirious. Dr. Balman’s orders for the night had included an opiate if conditions warranted it, so I went to the drug room.

The drug room is at the north end of the wing, directly opposite the diet kitchen. We always keep there a small supply of drugs for which we have frequent need. We do not keep the door locked as the drugs are in small quantities. In the drug room, too, we keep the various tools we are apt to need, among them a hypodermic syringe and a supply of needles. During the week past the syringe belonging to the south wing had got something wrong with its small plunger and Maida had brought her own outfit down for us to use, which had reposed beside the broken one in a drawer.

Pulling open this drawer I lifted the only syringe it contained and found it to be the broken one. Maida must be using the other, I reflected, and after waiting a few moments for her to return it I started out to find her.

She was in the kitchen, preparing a malted milk.

“May I have the hypo?” I asked hurriedly.

“The hypodermic syringe?”

“Of course. I need it at once.”

“Isn’t it in the drug room?” She was measuring the cream-coloured powder carefully.

“No. I thought you had it.”

“I haven’t used it tonight.” She did not look at me.

“I’ll see if Miss Flynn has it.” I turned quickly away. But Miss Flynn did not have it, and had not had it. She hinted that I must have overlooked it and even walked back to the drug room with me, pulling out the drawer with her own hand.

“Why, there it is!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

And to be sure, there it was!

I was considerably chagrined, especially as Miss Flynn laughed and said something not at all witty about my eyesight.

And in the very act of filling the thing I caught sight of something that almost made me drop it. It was only a scratch across the bit of nickel where the manufacturer’s name is engraved but it was a scratch I myself had made in order to identify it. In a hospital it is easy to get such things confused, so I had simply taken a pair of surgical scissors and scratched across the letter K which appeared in the manufacturer’s name, Kesselbach.

My own hypodermic syringe! How had it got there? Like a flash my mind reverted to the memory of Maida, sitting on the edge of the window sill, looking at my tool kit and taking this same tool in her pink-tipped fingers.

I administered the hypodermic automatically, sterilized the needle and replaced it, and returned to Eleven.

But in that darkened room, listening to the gradually less rapid breathing of the sick man, and the still gusty wind and rain through which a slow gray dawn was beginning to make itself felt, I found myself possessed of new problems.