The Patient in Room 18 · Chapter 14 (2/2)

“It might be. At any rate we know that no slicker was found on the porch or about the grounds, so it is likely that the murderer of Dr. Letheny carried it away with him. We had a strict guard on St. Ann’s the day following the murders. It is barely possible that we can yet trace the coat that you wore, Miss Keate.”

“Poor Higgins,” said Jim Gainsay gravely. “I had a hard time getting him to tell me that much. He refused to the last to tell me whose face he saw there in Room 18.”

“But he failed to raise an alarm even though he had reason to think that the radium was being removed,” murmured O’Leary. “Well, that’s all now, thank you, Gainsay.”

Jim Gainsay paused for a moment outside the door and I saw him look carefully up and down the dim corridor. No white uniform was in sight, however. Thinking to facilitate his departure I took the key to the south door from its hiding place and let him out that way. When I returned O’Leary was standing under the green light, studying his small notebook. He slipped it into his pocket as I approached.

“Nothing, Miss Keate, but what you heard,” he said rather wearily. “His explanation of the note to Miss Day and his activities during the night of the murders are identical with what Miss Day tells us. He sticks to the story of his telegram to his business associates that he told at the inquest. He says he took Dr. Letheny’s car and left the grounds of St. Ann’s very soon after you met him in the dark. And that he was at a ‘corner about half a mile from St. Ann’s’ when the storm broke⁠—which does not coincide with what we know. That is, if the lights you saw were the lights of the car he was driving, and it seems reasonable to believe that they were.”

“How about his presence here in St. Ann’s tonight at the time the radium was taken from you?”

“That got a rise out of him,” said O’Leary with an unexpected flash of whimsical satisfaction. “He was angry in a second. Every time Miss Day’s name came up he turned savage. If the radium had not disappeared I should be inclined to think that he came to St. Ann’s in the hope of seeing Miss Day, but with the radium gone again⁠—” he stopped abruptly, his face becoming grave again and dubious.

The green light cast crawling shadows; the black window pane stared impenetrably at us; far down the corridor a light went on with a subdued click, a glass clinked thinly against something metal, and I heard the soft pad-pad of a nurse’s rubber heels.

Presently O’Leary stirred. His eyes, still shining with that very lucent look, met mine intently.

“Corole Letheny is next. Do you want to go to see her with me? Very well, then, suppose we say at eight in the morning. You might just happen into the Letheny cottage and I’ll come. I may be a little delayed.”

The remaining hours of second watch dragged a little but passed quietly, and promptly at eight o’clock I wrapped myself in my blue, scarlet-lined cape, adjusted the wrinkled folds of the detestable Bishop collar, and let myself out the south door. The path was still wet, the trees and shrubbery were veiled in heavy mist, and the whole world very sombre and desolate.

At the bridge I came upon Jim Gainsay. He was sitting disconsolately on a log a little aside from the path, staring at a toad hopping across his feet and apparently lost in his own morose thoughts. I don’t think he had slept for he looked haggard and cold and must have been smoking steadily for hours, for there was a little white circle of cigarette ends around him.

“Young man,” I said with some acerbity, “don’t you know that cigarettes are coffin nails and you are making yourself subject to indigestion, nervous disorders, tuberculosis and asthma?”

He rose grudgingly and surveyed me without enthusiasm.

“To say nothing of measles and hay fever,” he said dourly. “Say, Miss Keate, is there any chance of seeing⁠—her?”

I did not ask whom.

“I don’t know. Have you not seen her lately?”

He glanced at me suspiciously, then motioned to a seat on the log and I found myself seated none too comfortably, with the moisture of a tree dripping down and completing the demoralization of my collar, and beside me a man whom I suspected of theft and⁠—theft, to say the least.

“That was why I was in the hospital last night about dinner time,” he said companionably. “I haven’t seen her for days and days. She is too damn devoted to duty.”

“Miss Day is a nice girl,” I said uncertainly.

“Nice!” He glared at me. “Nice! Is that all you can say for her? Lord! She can have me! The minute I saw her, I thought, ‘There she is! There’s my girl!’ Say!” he drew a long breath⁠—“and after I talked to her alone, there at that kitchen window last Thursday night, I knew Jim Gainsay’s time had come! I drove straight into town and wired the company that I should be delayed. And here I stay until she goes with me.” He paused and added ruefully: “It may take quite a while to convince her that she wants to go.”

“So that was what your message meant?”

He looked at me quickly. No matter what O’Leary said later I do not believe that Gainsay’s explanation was anything but spontaneous.

“Why didn’t you explain before?” I asked tartly, thinking of the trouble he had caused us.

“Explain!” cried Jim Gainsay in high derision. “The woman says ‘Explain’! Explain that I’ve gone straight off my head about a girl! Please, kind gentlemen, excuse me for hanging around just when murders are being perpetrated and no strangers wanted on the premises. But really, you know, I’ve just fallen in love. Explain! Hell!”

In some dignity I rose; even justifiable ill-nature can go too far.

“Good morning, Mr. Gainsay,” I said coldly. But as I turned the bend in the path, I looked backward. “I’ll ask her to take a walk this afternoon,” I promised, being a fool of an old maid. He brightened up at that and the last I saw of him he was casting pebbles at the frog with the liveliest interest on the part of each.

The porch of the Letheny cottage was still unswept and desolate, and though I rang and rang apparently no one heard me. Finally I opened the heavy door and walked into the hall. No one seemed to be about. The door to the study was closed, and thinking to find Corole there if anywhere I approached it. But with my hand actually on the brass knob, I paused, for the door itself swung gently a few inches toward me, I heard a low murmur of voices and realized that someone was on the other side of the door and in the very act of emerging from it.

“You are sure it is safe there?” said someone clearly.

It was Dr. Hajek’s voice.

“Quite,” said Corole, whose accents were unmistakable.

“Then today is as good as any.”

“I⁠—suppose so.” Corole seemed reluctant.

“Are you backing down?” I had not believed that Fred Hajek’s voice could be so ugly.

“No,” said Corole. “No.”

“Then why not today?” The door closed sharply on the last syllable as if propelled by a vigorous motion on the part of the speaker.

In some perplexity I waited. I could still hear the sounds of voices, but the words were unintelligible. All at once, however, the man’s voice rose as if in anger, and without pausing to consider my action I simply grasped that brass knob and flung the door open.

I interrupted a strange tableau.

Corole was leaning backward against the table, her lips drawn back in a snarl and her eyes gleaming green fire. Dr. Hajek was no less moved; his face was dark red, his fists clinched, his dark eyes glittering unpleasantly between slitted lids. He was speaking when I opened the door and I caught his last words. They were thick with fury.

“… and now you refuse. After all I have done⁠—for you!”

“Oh, I don’t refuse,” cried Corole.

Then they both saw me.

Dr. Hajek’s dark face flushed a still deeper, painful red. By an effort, apparently of will, he relaxed his hands, reached for a cap that lay on the table, muttered something under his breath, and wheeled toward the door. Corole recovered her self-possession more easily; she raised her eyebrows and shrugged as if in amusement. She wore an amazing Chinese coat, stiffly embroidered in gold and green, dancing pumps with rhinestone heels and shabby toes, and no stockings!

“Good morning,” she said with shameless calm.

I think O’Leary must have met Dr. Hajek in the hall, for I heard his voice before he entered the study. At the door he stopped.

“You, too,” said Corole, losing her amused smile.

“May I come in, Miss Letheny?” O’Leary asked. He looked as fresh and well groomed as if he had had a long night’s sleep. “I rang the bell but no one answered.”

Corole pulled her bizarre coat tighter about her.

“Huldah decided she no longer liked it here,” she said. “She left last night⁠—rather abruptly. Yes, do come in, Mr. O’Leary.”

There followed an hour I shall not soon forget. I had never seen Lance O’Leary so mercilessly intent. I was both fascinated and awed to note the way he cut through Corole’s pretences and poses, her feline evasions and her suave smiles, and by sheer strength of will forced her to give to his inquiries answers that were direct if they were not entirely truthful.

He began with the revolver, but she repeated the denial of all knowledge regarding its presence in Room 18 she had given at the inquest. Also, to further questions as to her visit to Room 18 on the night it had sheltered that irascible patient, Mr. Gastin, she repeated the lame explanation she had given at the time. She admitted coolly enough that she understood the use of a hypodermic outfit, and as coolly, though with an evil glance at me, that she had made a trip through the orchard immediately after hearing of Dr. Letheny’s death; she had wished to see Dr. Hajek, she said brazenly, to discuss with him the news of the tragedy.

It was then that O’Leary held before her eyes the small gold sequin.

“Enough of this, Miss Letheny,” he said coldly. “It would be better for you to give me your fullest confidence. Why were you at the window of Room 18 last Thursday night? This ornament was found on the window sill. How did it get there?”

Corole stared blankly from the gold sequin to O’Leary, but back of those queer topaz eyes I felt that she was thinking desperately.

“Well,” she said finally, “I was near Room 18. In fact, I went as far as the window sill. You see, I was walking in the orchard. I was near the porch of the south wing when I heard something⁠—a sort of noise, there at the window of the corner room.” She stopped and ran a quick, catlike tongue over her lips. “Room 18, that is. I was rather curious so I crept up nearer the window. A man was opening the screen and crawling into Room 18. He left the screen up and I slipped quietly up to the window. I am rather tall, you know, and as I leaned for a moment on the sill I suppose the sequin got detached from my gown.”

“It was very dark that night. Did you see all this?”

She moistened her lips again; they were taking on a bluish tinge.

“I⁠—I see in the dark better than most people.” (Which I, for one, did not doubt.) “And anyway I could hear, you know.”

“What could you hear? Why should you think that the noise you heard was made by a man crawling in the window of Room 18? That is just a little farfetched, Miss Letheny.”

“It is true, anyhow,” she said sulkily. “I heard the screen catch as he pulled it up and the sort of⁠—scrambling sound he made, and I could see the patch of light that was his shirt front.”

“If all that is true, why did you not rouse St. Ann’s at once?”

“Because I knew who the man was.”

There was a brief, electric silence.

“Who was the man?” said O’Leary very quietly.

“My cousin, Louis Letheny.” She brought the name out with a suggestion of triumph. I do not know whether it was a surprise to O’Leary or not; however, he said nothing for a full moment. His clear gray eyes were studying Corole’s face.

“Naturally,” went on Corole with a degree of malicious satisfaction, “naturally I could not arouse the hospital to advertise the fact that the head of the institution had just crawled through a window. Who was I to know Dr. Letheny’s purpose?”

“You are lying,” said O’Leary. “I warned you not to lie. The man you saw crawling through the window of Room 18 was not Dr. Letheny. You and Dr. Hajek were together in the orchard that night and you actually did lean at the window sill, intending to enter Room 18, but Dr. Letheny was already in Room 18. You and Dr. Hajek discussed whether it would be better to wait until Dr. Letheny came out of Room 18, or for Dr. Hajek to follow him into that room.”

In the twinkling of an eye Corole had become saffron yellow, the dabs of orange rouge on her cheeks stood out, emphasizing her high cheekbones with grisly clearness; her eyes were flat and gleaming and her lips had drawn back a little from her teeth and the garish Chinese coat accentuated her ugly pallor.

“Who told you that?” she whispered through those hideous lips.

“Higgins told me,” replied O’Leary very distinctly.

“Higgins!” cried Corole hoarsely, flinging up one brown, jewelled hand toward her throat. “Higgins! But he is dead!”

“Higgins told me,” repeated O’Leary. “Now then, tell me. What did you and Dr. Hajek do?”

“We⁠—we met at the bridge. We walked together through the orchard.” Corole’s desperate effort to regain her self-control was not nice to witness.

“Go on.”

“Then⁠—as I said⁠—we heard a man in Room 18. And wanted to know what he was doing there. That was natural, I think.” She paused.

“Possibly,” said O’Leary. “Why did you not wait until this⁠—this man⁠—came out from Eighteen?”

“We did not wait for him. Someone came along. We never knew just who it was, though I thought that it was Jim Gainsay. He was in the orchard that night, too.”

“Seems to have been a popular rendezvous,” commented O’Leary grimly. “So this approaching person frightened you away?”

“Not at all,” denied Corole with a flash of her normal ease. “We just⁠—left.”

“Where did you go?”

“Through the apple orchard.”

“And having eluded this⁠—er⁠—unknown person, you returned to the intriguing vicinity of Room 18?”

“No,” said Corole flatly. “I came immediately home.”

“And Dr. Hajek?”

“Returned to his room at St. Ann’s.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

Corole hesitated.

“He told me so, later,” she said lamely.

“Why were you intending to intercept Dr. Letheny⁠—or rather, the man whom you thought to be Dr. Letheny?”

Corole leaned forward.

“Look here, I know that Louis Letheny was in Room 18 that night!”

“I know that, too,” agreed O’Leary quietly.

She leaned back on the cushions, her eyes puzzled and her swinging rhinestone heels catching red and green lights.

“Why did you intend to intercept him?” repeated O’Leary.

“Because⁠—Dr. Hajek felt he should know the reason for Louis’s strange actions.”

“Dr. Hajek being an interne and Dr. Letheny the head doctor,” commented O’Leary skeptically.

Corole’s eyes shot a vicious, sidelong look at the detective but she said nothing.