The Patient in Room 18 · Chapter 12 (2/2)

“When the lights were turned out,” he corrected. “How soon will you finish that thing?”

“I am through now.” I verified the chart hastily and thrust it in its place in the rack. “Have you⁠—found anything?”

“Yes.” He spoke coolly. “I have⁠—found a good deal. First, though, why did you telephone for me?”

“Why, it was Higgins! It was Higgins and now it is too late!”

His gray eyes studied me.

“What do you mean?”

My heart began to thump as speculation aroused within me.

“Higgins,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Higgins saw the face of the man that killed Mr. Jackson.”

There was a moment of silence so profound that the very walls seemed to whisper and echo my words; someone in the kitchen nearby dropped a spoon and at the metallic little rattle O’Leary stirred.

“Higgins⁠—saw the face of the man who killed Jackson,” he repeated slowly. “How do you know, Miss Keate?”

As rapidly as possible I repeated to him the whole of my amazing conversation with Higgins. Then, more reluctantly, I told him of Jim Gainsay’s presence back of the willows where he could overhear every word we had spoken. I told him also of what the cook had said.

His inscrutable eyes studying me shrewdly, O’Leary said nothing until I had finished.

“Then Jim Gainsay heard Higgins not only admit his dangerous knowledge but promise to tell you tonight the name of that man. Tonight.”

“Yes.” Then as I caught the emphasis, I went on hurriedly: “But Jim Gainsay had nothing to do with his death. I saw nothing of Jim Gainsay tonight. I⁠—I am sure⁠ ⁠…” My voice trailed breathlessly away under O’Leary’s sharp regard.

“And as far as we know now Jim Gainsay was the last person to see Higgins alive?” He continued quite as if I had not rushed to Jim Gainsay’s defence.

“As far as we know now,” I pointed out. “We may find that someone talked to him after he was seen with Jim Gainsay.”

“Gainsay overheard your conversation. The man whose face Higgins saw had everything to lose at such evidence. No one but Gainsay and you, Miss Keate, knew of its existence. I’m sorry; Gainsay seems to be a decent enough young fellow.” He paused, fumbled in his pocket, drew out the shabby stub of a pencil and began turning it over and over in his slender, well-kept fingers.

The light above my head was paling in the slow, gray light of early morning which was struggling in through the windows and making the whole place more desolate and more grim and forbidding than it had been in the dark of night.

“It is a difficult situation,” he said presently.

I pushed my cap farther back on my head and rubbed my hand across my eyes⁠—eyes that were tired and weary with what they had seen that night.

“I dread the effect of this night’s doing; it will almost demoralize our staff, to say nothing of its effect upon outsiders. We are looking to you to straighten out this hideous tangle. And it must be soon.”

His face was very sober.

“I hope to do so,” he said gravely. “I think I am not saying too much when I tell you that I have good reason to hope for success.”

There was a restrained little throb of exhilaration in his voice.

“Do you mean⁠—” I began sharply. He interrupted me.

“I mean only that I am beginning to arrive at some conclusions.” And without giving me a chance to ask what those conclusions were he continued at once: “Are you sure Higgins said it was a man’s face that he saw?”

I went back in my memory, over that brief and baffling conversation, now never to be finished. Poor Higgins!

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “He did not definitely say it was a man. I⁠—I’m afraid I just assumed it to be a man.”

“Assuming is dangerous,” said O’Leary quietly. “But he did say that he saw three people?”

“He said he knew that there were three people in Room 18 that night.”

“And that there were four people⁠—Corole Letheny and Dr. Hajek and Jim Gainsay and⁠—Dr. Letheny in and about St. Ann’s that dark midnight?”

I nodded confirmatively.

“He said, too, that he saw Jim Gainsay’s face by the light of a match. And that he saw the face of the man⁠—or person⁠—who killed Jackson by the light of the match.”

“But that doesn’t prove⁠—” I began hotly.

“No⁠—no, of course not,” he said absently. “You say he was of the opinion that the man⁠—”

“He kept saying the ‘party,’ ” I interpolated.

“Who killed Jackson and the⁠—the party⁠—” with a rather grim tightening of his lips, O’Leary adopted Higgins’s terms⁠—“Who killed Dr. Letheny was not the same person.”

“He said ‘no, that couldn’t hardly be.’ ” Strange how vividly I recalled his hesitating confession.

“It is apparent, of course, that the man in Room 18 must have had some sort of light, if only for a second, in order to conceal the radium. Higgins knew where it was all the time. He swore to me that he had slept through the whole night. Well⁠—” O’Leary’s shoulders lifted a little.

“We will never know now what Higgins saw,” I commented, my thoughts sombre.

O’Leary raised his eyes from the pencil for a moment.

“Don’t be too sure of that, Miss Keate. Did you get the speaker for me?”

“Yes.”

“Put it in a safe place?”

I nodded. “I longed to look inside it but did not.”

He smiled.

“Suppose we look now.”

The rustle of my starched skirts echoed against the empty gray-white walls. The general office was deserted, likewise the stairs and corridors. Once in my room I unlocked the door of the chifferette, withdrew the speaker, and holding it carefully, hastened back to the south wing. O’Leary was still sitting beside the chart desk, his gray gaze on Maida, who was bent over an entry she was making on Three’s chart. If she wondered what I was doing with the loud speaker she did not say so but returned immediately to Three.

I set the speaker down on the shining glass top of the chart desk. My hands were shaking a little and I held my breath while O’Leary removed one of the sides of the speaker. We both peered into it. Then O’Leary put his hand inside and groped around.

We stared at the compact arrangement of wires and tiny coils and screws, then met each other’s gaze.

“Nothing!” I said.

“Nothing!” confirmed O’Leary. He studied the thing thoughtfully for a moment.

“Did anyone see you take this to your room?”

“No one. That is, no one but⁠—but Maida. I met her at the door just as I was carrying it to my room.”

“Miss Day⁠—h’mm.” And after another pause: “Are you sure that this is the same speaker that was in Room 18?”

“Why, yes. No. That is⁠—” I hastened to explain as he cast a decidedly irritated glance at me⁠—“that is, I mean that this is the speaker that was in Sonny’s room and I just assumed it to be the one that I had left there.”

“Assuming again,” remarked O’Leary with dry disapproval. “It might have been one from another room, then?”

“Yes. It might have been. But I think⁠—”

“Did you know that the speaker at present in Room 18 has been torn open, probably during the night?”

“What!”

“Evidently the⁠—er⁠—visitor in Room 18 tonight thought what we thought and did not know that the original speaker in Room 18 had been removed. Or else⁠—” He left his sentence uncompleted, turned abruptly and strode down the hall to Sonny’s room.

I followed him to the door. Sonny was awake.

“Good morning,” said O’Leary kindly. “It is rather early in the morning for young fellows like you to be awake. Look here, Sonny, the other night Miss Keate brought in a loudspeaker for the radio attachment, just like this one in my hand. She left it here and took away the one that you already had on your table. Then last night, she came in and took away the speaker she had left with you. I want to know whether the loud speaker she took away last night was the very same speaker she brought in here.”

Sonny looked bewildered and O’Leary repeated his question patiently and clearly.

“Why, no,” said Sonny finally. “That speaker she brought in wouldn’t work.”

“What happened to it, then?”

“Why”⁠—Sonny frowned⁠—“Miss Day was in to see me and I told her the speaker wasn’t working so she took it away and brought me another. The one she brought in worked fine. But Miss Keate came and got it last night.” He looked reproachfully at me.

“Thank you, Sonny,” said O’Leary briefly.

I have never seen O’Leary showing any feeling or excitement, but there were eighteen rooms in that wing and I don’t think it took him eighteen minutes to examine all the loud speakers in the whole wing. He did not omit one save, of course, that already rifled speaker in Room 18.

When he had finished, still without any results that I could see, he went to Maida.

“Miss Day,” he began, “you took a loud speaker exactly like this one”⁠—he still carried under his arm the instrument that I had so futilely treasured⁠—“from Sonny’s room last night. What did you do with it?”

Maida put back a wisp of black hair that had strayed from under her immaculate cap; her blue eyes regarded us steadily from the weary, dark circles about them.

“I put it on the table in Room 18,” she replied at once. “It was out of order somehow, and I thought likely Room 18 would be unoccupied. So I simply exchanged the speakers.”

“Thank you, Miss Day. You did not⁠—er⁠—examine it closely to see what was wrong with it?”

“No,” she said. “I know nothing of such things; I couldn’t possibly have repaired it.”

She went on about her errand.

“A strange case,” mused O’Leary, his clear, gray eyes following the slim, white-clad figure moving away from us. “The speaker in Room 18 was the right one, after all. The question is, was the radium in it and if so who took it? Who has it now? When we know that answer we will know who shot poor old Higgins.” He went to the window over the chart desk, flung it up to the sash, and took a deep breath of the fog-laden air. His intent young face, his curiously lucid gray eyes, showed no hint of a night without sleep.

“A strange case,” he repeated absently. He turned from the dripping gray orchard beyond the window, fingered idly the bronzed surface of the loud speaker there on the desk.

“Another thing, Miss Keate⁠—did you notice that when Dr. Hajek came from his room tonight, presumably from his bed, he wore trousers under that bathrobe that he held so tightly to him? And that those trousers had fresh, wet mud stains about the cuffs?”

I murmured something, I don’t know what, and O’Leary met my shocked gaze quietly.

“And furthermore,” he said softly, “I found fresh mud stains on the window sill of his room. Really, Miss Keate, this hospital of yours should have been built with its first floor higher from the ground. Entrances and exits are too easy.”