The Patient in Room 18 · Chapter 15 (2/2)

We were not very busy, so I had plenty of time to think. More than once I caught myself eyeing Maida as she went quietly about her business.

Once, when we were both at the desk, engaged in a desultory and halfhearted conversation, footsteps padding softly along the corridor back of us caught our attention and I turned simultaneously with Maida. I noted that her eyes flared black as she whirled and her lips were a quick, set line, and wondered if my own face showed such immediate alarm. However, it was only Olma Flynn, advancing to tell me through chattering teeth that she was sure there was Something in Room 18. I was startled for a flash, though at once I realized that it was O’Leary, and Maida went white though she held her shoulders straighter than ever.

I managed to calm Olma, though she clung to her point with a firmness that in my heart I labelled plain mule stubbornness.

“If we are all murdered before morning, Miss Keate, it will be your fault,” she said at last.

“Nonsense! If it is a ghost, as you seem to believe, you need not be alarmed. Ghosts can’t do anything but moan around the corners.” It was unfortunate that just then the wind swept through the draughty old corridor with a most realistic moan, upon which Olma turned green and vanished into the diet kitchen. It was this, I think, that gave rise to a swiftly travelling tale that Room 18 was haunted, a tale that the south wing has never yet been able to live down.

Thinking to warn O’Leary that he must be more circumspect in his behaviour if he wished his presence in that ill-omened room to remain a secret, I watched my chance to slip unobserved into Eighteen. Dawn was creeping into the room by that time and the furniture loomed up dark and black in the cold half-light. The room was quite empty of human presence, though to my tired nerves it seemed that there might be other presences. I shrugged aside the unwelcome thought. A glance at the window showed me that the bolts had been slipped and the screen opened. I had no doubt that O’Leary was making use of that low window as others had done. I resisted a childish impulse to fasten the bolts against his return and returned to the corridor.

With the tinny sound of the breakfast bell away down in the basement, the straggling through the corridors of the day nurses, freshly uniformed if a trifle gray about the eyes, the fragrant smell of coffee floating through the halls, my vigilance relaxed a bit. The night was past and so far as I knew nothing out of the way had occurred. Knowing Corole to be a late sleeper I did not go immediately to my room to release her. Instead I followed Maida and Olma and the student nurse downstairs to the dining room. It was a sorry meal with buckwheat cakes which I despise and which, besides, give me hives, and Miss Dotty relating a very lurid dream and dissolving into tears under Melvina’s interpretation. The tears dripped dismally down Miss Dotty’s inefficient nose, Melvina enlarged upon the meaning of dreams, and I found that I had sugared my coffee twice. I was glad when the meal was over.

In the intervals of Melvina’s sinister monologue I had come to the conclusion that Corole Letheny under lock and key was not a situation to be lightly relinquished. I sought O’Leary at once, surreptitiously avoiding the day nurses. He was not in Room 18, so I straightened the wrinkled counterpane on the bed and left. As I passed through the corridor of the second charity ward I took a breakfast tray off the dumbwaiter standing there unguarded; the disappearance of the tray caused considerable excitement in the ward, I found later, which was augmented by its reappearance later in the morning in the second-floor linen closet where I had thoughtfully left it, with only the coffee splashed a little, for Corole did not even see that breakfast tray.

When I unlocked the door to my room it required only a glance to see that my bird had flown, so to speak. I set the tray on the dresser and advanced into the room. The bed was tossed and had been slept in, though the night garment I had loaned her was still decorously folded on a chair. The window was open, letting in gusts of rain on my flowered voile curtains which were running in pink and green streaks and later had to be replaced. I crossed to close it and in doing so found the mode of her exit. St. Ann’s, as I have said, was an old building with numerous turrets and towers and roof irregularities which included various ledges and wide window casings. From the window beyond mine dropped an old-fashioned, iron fire escape fastened to the old red bricks with rusted bolts. And from my window to the next ran a sort of ledge, narrow, to be sure, and slippery, but there was the ivy to cling to and shrubbery below to break a fall. For a woman of Corole’s build and propensities it was not a difficult climb and once on the fire escape the rest was easy. I leaned out the window. Had I still been unconvinced, there was proof of her passage, for caught on an ivy strand there hung a dejected, wet, black wisp of monkey fur.

So Corole was gone! I felt guilty for letting her slip through my fingers but reflected that O’Leary had known of her presence in St. Ann’s, and moreover, a woman cannot go far in a drenched coat and no hat.

This comfortable reflection lasted until I went to the wardrobe and found that my best hat was gone. The hat was a very beautiful thing with quantities of artificial violets on it and three yards of looped purple ribbon, and had cost me twenty-five dollars owing to my having it made to order to fit my bobless head. And Corole had brazenly worn it out in the rain, which did not increase my affection for Corole.

I set forth again to find O’Leary, feeling that he should know at once of Corole’s flight, pausing only to leave the tray in the second-floor linen closet.

O’Leary turned up at last in the vast old stable, now converted into a garage, that is out back of St. Ann’s. He was apparently engaged in sniffing at something that I did not see and that he thrust hurriedly into his pocket at the sound of my approach.

In as few words as possible I told him of Corole’s departure.

His face became very sober.

“That’s bad,” he said. “That’s bad. I figured she was safe in your hands. So she got away across that ledge.” The place was visible from where we stood, and he surveyed it thoughtfully through the gray streaks of rain.

“Well, it can’t be helped now. You say she wore your hat?”

“Yes.”

“She would not be apt to return to the Letheny cottage,” he mused. “Let me see; it is barely seven o’clock⁠—the stores will not be open for another hour. There is plenty of time.”

“The stores?”

“She will go straight to buy a hat,” he explained with remarkable lack of tact. “Corole Letheny is not going far in a hat that⁠—” He noted my unsympathetic countenance. “A hat that⁠—er⁠—does not suit her. I mean that she did not choose herself,” he amended hastily.

Without saying a word I turned toward the gravelled path that leads back to St. Ann’s.

“Wait a minute, Miss Keate,” begged O’Leary contritely, seeing perhaps that he had offended me in a matter that no woman can freely forgive. “Please, wait. If you’ll forgive me I’ll tell you something of interest.”

Being exceedingly curious I went back. He drew me into the shadow of a big gray ambulance.

“I want you to keep an eye on Miss Day,” he said in a low voice and with an odd glance into the shadows of the place.

“Miss Day!”

“Especially if you see this fellow, Gainsay, hanging around.”

“Why, what do you mean? Is Jim Gainsay⁠—”

“Jim Gainsay is the man who was following Corole last night. O’Brien was stationed up at the cottage last night and saw him. It seems that Corole slipped out a side door. She came out so unexpectedly that she was into the orchard before O’Brien was after her. He was going full tilt when he found that someone else was ahead of him, both of them after Corole, who was having the devil’s own luck, according to O’Brien, in avoiding tree trunks and shrubbery. O’Brien says she can see in the dark. At the bridge O’Brien caught up with the man and can swear it was Gainsay, but just then a low-hanging branch knocked O’Brien down and senseless for a moment and when he got to his feet Corole and Gainsay were both gone. O’Brien wandered about the orchard hunting them for half the night and I ran into him about five o’clock, soaked to the skin and his face a welt of scratches and his disposition permanently warped.”

“So it was Jim Gainsay who gave Corole such a fright,” I murmured. “I wonder what he wanted.”

“It looks bad for Gainsay,” said O’Leary thoughtfully. “Whether he killed Dr. Letheny in a mistaken effort to defend Miss Day, or whether he killed Jackson for the sake of the radium, or whether, thinking that the radium is still at large he is determined to secure it for his own use, in any case it looks bad. I hope your little friend, Miss Day, is not going to be too much hurt.”

“You mean if she cares for Gainsay? Maida is not one to wear her heart on her sleeve. If we could only find that radium,” I concluded hopelessly.

“Oh, I have the radium,” said O’Leary simply.