The Patient in Room 18

M. G. Eberhart

Garden City, New York

[An Unpleasant Dinner Party]
[In Room 18]
[Dr. Letheny Does Not Return]
[A Yellow Slicker and Other Problems]
[A Lapis Cuff Link]
[I Make a Discovery—and Regret It]
[The Disappearing Key and Part of an Inquest]
[A Gold Sequin]
[Under the Barberry Bush]
[A Midnight Visitor]
[By the Light of a Match]
[Room 18 Again]
[The Radium Appears]
[A Matter of Evidence]
[Corole Is Moved to Candour]
[The Red Light Above the Door]
[O’Leary Tells a Story]
[O’Leary Revises His Story]

William and Margaret Good

NOTE

All of the characters in this book, as well as St. Ann’s Hospital, are entirely fictitious.

1. An Unpleasant Dinner Party

St. Ann’s is an old hospital, sprawling in a great heap of weather-stained red brick and green ivy on the side of Thatcher Hill, a little east and south of the city of B——. The building, though remodelled and added on to here and there, still retains the great, solid walls, the gumwood and walnut woodwork, the large, old-fashioned rooms, and the general air of magnificence and dignity that characterized what was known, in the grandiloquent nineties, as the Thatcher mansion.

Time has made changes; quantities of windows, low and wide, modern plumbing, electricity, a telephone to every floor, and added wings whose brick walls have been carefully weather-stained to match the original walls are some of them. On the west is the main entrance, an imposing affair of massive doors and great travertine pillars and curving driveway. But on the south, at the extreme end of the south wing, is another and less imposing entrance, a small, semi-circular, colonial porch and a glass-paned door that leads from the hushed hospital corridor directly upon a narrow strip of grass and then shrubbery and apple orchard and willows and thickets of firs. From this door, too, is a path leading up and around the hill, and, considerably below and beyond the thickets of trees and brush, winds a road, dusty and seldom used.

The south wing is the most recently rebuilt wing of St. Ann’s, and time was when Room 18 was the brightest and sunniest room of the whole wing. I say, time was. Room 18 is now cleaned and dusted regularly twice a week by two student nurses. Occasionally Miss Jones, the office superintendent, tries to enter a patient in Room 18, but patients from the city remember too well the newspaper headlines—such as Room 18 Claims Its Third Victim—and refuse at the first hint of that significant numeral. Patients from out of town present a no less serious problem in that, even though they take the room assigned to them without demur, they invariably demand removal to another room after only a few hours’ residence in Room 18. Once we tried giving the whole wing a new set of numbers but it made no difference. Room 18 was Room 18 and the patients placed there, with one exception, have never remained past midnight.

I do not know whether this situation is due to the patients mysteriously getting wind of Room 18’s history, in spite of the nurses being forbidden to speak of the unfortunate affair, or to the undoubtedly sinister aspect the room has managed to acquire. This latter has puzzled me more than a little. The room has the same hygienic and utilitarian furniture it always had, the same southeast corner location, the same outlook of close-encircling orchard and dense green shrubbery, though, of course, the shades are drawn to a decorous length, and the same rubberized floor covering. It is true that the last item may somewhat induce the atmosphere of the repellent that Eighteen’s very walls seem to exude, because it holds, despite the efforts of various scrubwomen, a certain darkish stain there at the foot of the narrow bed.

It is a fact that five minutes in that too-still room bring chills up the small of my back, clammy moisture to the palms of my hands, and a singular and pressing desire to escape. And I have a good stomach, no nerves, and little imagination.

And in the long, dark hours of the second watch, between midnight and early morning, I still avoid the closed, mysterious door of Room 18!

The night it began, Corole Letheny had a dinner party up at the doctor’s cottage on the hillside, at the end of the path from the south door. She telephoned hastily, late in the afternoon, for Maida Day and me. She was giving the dinner, it appeared, for a young civil engineer, a friend of Dr. Letheny’s, who had dropped in unexpectedly on his way from a bridge in Uruguay to another bridge in Russia. Ordinarily I do not care for Corole’s dinners, which are apt to acquire an exotic tinge that is distasteful to me, but a travel tale and an engineer allure me equally and since I did not go on duty that night until midnight I promised to come. Maida was a little harder to get, seeming, indeed, to be unusually reluctant, and her voice, as I heard it, standing beside her at the telephone, was anything but cordial.

“Never mind,” I said as she hung up the receiver and Corole’s warm, husky tones ceased. “Never mind. It may be quite diverting. And this is cold roast beef night here at St. Ann’s.”

Maida laughed.

“Corole’s dinners often are—diverting,” she said rather cruelly. “I shouldn’t have gone but she really is in a mess. The man just arrived this afternoon and he is leaving in the morning. Corole knew, too, that we both had second watch this two weeks and that we could be away from the hospital until twelve.”

“I think,” I said reflectively as we strolled from the office, whither we had been called to the telephone, back along the narrow corridor that leads to the south wing, “I think I shall wear my silver tissue.”

Maida nodded, giving me the straight look from her intensely blue eyes that I had so grown to like in the three years that she had been a graduate nurse at St. Ann’s.

“Do so, by all means,” she agreed. “And put your hair up high on your head.”

Maida professes to a great admiration for my hair, and I daresay it is well enough in its way; that is, if you like red hair and plenty of it. I have never cut it; no woman of my years, especially one with a high-bridged nose and inclined to embonpoint, freckles, and ground-grippers, should cut her hair.

Later, gowned in the silver tissue, and with a dark silk coat over my finery, for the June night had turned cloudy, I slipped into the south wing for a last look to be sure that everything was going well. Having been superintendent of the wing for more years than I care to mention, I feel a natural sense of responsibility. Dinner I found to be well over, seven o’clock temperatures taken, the typhoid convalescent in Eleven a bit less feverish, and the new cast on Six a little more comfortable.

Six caught at a fold of my dress admiringly.

“All dressed up?” he said. He was a nice boy, who had a tubercular hip bone and had spent the last six months in a cast.

“Isn’t she fine?” said Maida from the doorway. I saw the boy’s eyes widen before I turned toward her.

I had grown accustomed to Maida in her stern white uniform. Now her black hair and the sword-blue of her eyes and the vivid pink that flared into her cheeks and lips at the least touch of excitement—all this, above a wispy, clinging dinner gown of midnight-blue that was somehow barely frosted in crystal beads, affected me much as it did the boy.

“Gee!” he breathed finally.

Maida laughed a little tremulously; the compliment in his eyes was pathetically genuine.

“Don’t be silly, Sonny,” she said, but her blue eyes shone. “How is the new cast?”

“Oh—all right,” said Sonny gamely.

“I’ll come in and tell you about the party when we get back,” promised Maida (knowing that in the agony of a ten-hour-old cast he would still be awake).

“Gee,” said Sonny again, “will you, Miss Day?”

“Yes,” said Maida with that grave sincerity that was one of her charms. “Ready, Sarah?”

I followed Maida from the room and along the corridor south to the end of the wing. Once through the door and across the small porch we reached the path that wound through the orchard, over a small bridge, and across a field of sweet-smelling alfalfa to the Letheny cottage.

The path is not wide enough for two abreast, so Maida preceded me and I found myself studying her slim shoulders and gracefully alert carriage. Maida always seemed to me to be poised on the crest of a wave; as if she were continually victorious and yet not arrogant. She is that rare thing, a born nurse. She can deal successfully with the most difficult hypochondriacs and yet I have seen her in furious, desperate tears over a case like Sonny’s. It is not my intention to rhapsodize over Maida. I suppose I admired her because she was so gloriously what I might have been in my younger days had things been a little different. Though, of course, I am not and never was the beauty that Maida was.

Well, we found Corole waiting for us and the other guests already having cocktails. Dr. Letheny greeted me as meticulously as if we had not operated together that very morning. He was a tall man, dark and thin, with an extraordinarily precise manner, and was almost too correct as to dress. He lingered a little over taking Maida’s wrap and said something in a low voice that I did not understand, though Maida replied briefly and turned away, her slim black eyebrows registering annoyance.

Dr. Balman, Dr. Letheny’s assistant, was there; a lanky man of medium height, with a thin, pale face, a high benevolent forehead, thoughtful eyes that were usually detached and rather dreamy, and a thin pointed beard that was awry now, as always, owing to a habit he had of worrying it with his slender, acid-stained fingers. His scant, light hair was ruffled and needed to be trimmed, his cravat uneven, and his dress clothes formal and old-fashioned.

There was Dr. Fred Hajek, too, pronounced “Hiyek” and referred to flippantly among the student nurses as “Hijack.” He was the interne who lived at the hospital, answered the telephone nights, took care of dressings and emergencies, and generally made himself useful. He was considerably younger than the other two doctors, though one wouldn’t have guessed it from his matured, well-built figure. He had a squarish head, a ruddy face with more than a hint of the foreign in it, a hint that was augmented by his small, black moustache, and dark eyes whose somewhat slanted lids looked too small for the eyes and thus gave a curious impression of tightness and restraint. He had a pleasant manner, however, and a fresh, vigorous appearance that was not unattractive.

Then my eyes were caught by a blond young giant who advanced as Corole spoke.

“Jim Gainsay,” she murmured casually over her creamy brown shoulder as she offered Maida a cocktail.

He said something or other to me politely but I saw his keen eyes go to Maida and linger there as if unable to take themselves away, while I quite deliberately took stock of this tall young fellow with bronzed hands and face who built bridges here and there over the world and looked as if he hadn’t more than got out of university. In fact, a fraternity crest gleamed on the surface of the thin, white-gold cigarette case that he held open in one hand as if the sight of Maida had frozen him in the very act of drawing out a cigarette. On closer observation, however, I was obliged to revise my hasty estimate. There were wrinkles about his eyes; his sun-tanned eyebrows were a straight, inscrutable line almost meeting over his nose; his jaw was lean and rather ruthless; his smooth-fitting Tuxedo disclosed lines that were muscular, without an ounce of superfluous flesh. Here was a man accustomed to dealing with other men; yes, and of shaping them to suit his own ends, or I was no judge of character.

And just then Huldah, Corole’s one maid, announced dinner somewhat breathlessly as if she must fly back to the kitchen, and we all took our places around the long, candle-lit table.

The soup was bad and the fish poorly seasoned, but the Virginia-baked ham was delicious and I found myself warming to the soft, wavering lights, the gleam of silver and glass and flowers, the white and black contrasts presented by the men setting off Maida’s red-and-white beauty and Corole’s rather blatant charm. Corole had charm, in spite of my questionable adjective—charm of a sort rather flagrant and too warm, but still it was difficult not to fall a little under its sway. She sat at the foot of the table with Jim Gainsay on one side and Dr. Hajek on the other. Her hair was arranged in flat, metallic, gold waves and she wore a strange gown of gold sequins with gleams of green showing through. It clung smoothly to her and was extremely low in the back, showing Corole’s brownish skin almost to the waist, and I could not help speculating on the probable reaction of our board of directors to such a gown worn by our head doctor’s housekeeper. Corole was a cousin of Dr. Letheny’s and had kept house for him since the death of old Madame Letheny. We knew little of her history and I should have liked to know more, though I am not inquisitive. I often wondered what circumstances produced the brown-skinned, gold-haired Corole we knew. She was a great deal like a luxuriant Persian cat; she even had topaz eyes and a peculiarly lazy grace.

The conversation during the dinner was rather languid. Corole did not seem much concerned about the dinner, but she was a little abstracted, though automatically, if one-sidedly, flirting with Jim Gainsay, who had eyes for no one but Maida. That was very clear to me, though none of the others seemed to notice it—with the possible exception of Dr. Letheny, who saw everything through the perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke that almost obscured his narrow, dark eyes. Dr. Balman was frankly absorbed in dinner and admitted that he had been interested in a laboratory experiment and had not eaten during the day.

“But you left it to come to my dinner,” smiled Corole.

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Balman flatly, without looking up from his salad. “I had finished anyhow.”

“Oh,” said Corole, and Dr. Letheny’s thin mouth curved the least bit.

“So you have been bridge-building in Uruguay?” I addressed Jim Gainsay. He turned his keen eyes steadily toward me.

“Yes.”

“I suppose Uruguay is now prosperous, European, and civilized?” I went on, hoping to get him started telling of some of the adventures that must have befallen him. I have an explorer’s instincts and stay-at-home habits, so have to get my travels by proxy.

“Yes. Though the remoter portions are still, in some respects, the Banda Oriental.”

“The Banda Oriental?” said Corole blankly.

“The Purple Land that England lost,” said Maida softly, and Gainsay’s eyes met hers with quick interest—interest and something more.

Corole’s eyelids flickered.

“Serve coffee in the Doctor’s study, Huldah,” she said. “And open the windows.”

The night had turned unbelievably sultry while we sat at the table, so hot that the very breath of the tapers seemed unbearable and we all felt relieved, I think, to leave the table and dispose ourselves comfortably in the great, cushioned chairs and divans in Dr. Letheny’s study. The one lamp on the table was enough, though it left the room for the most part in shadow—rather uncanny green shadow, for the lamp was shaded with green silk and fringe. The windows had been flung to the top but there was not a breeze stirring, even here on the windward side of the hill, and it was so quiet that we could hear the katydids and crickets down in the orchard, and the faint strains of radio music from the open windows of the hospital, whose lights gleamed dully through the trees.

“Radio in a hospital?” queried Jim Gainsay amusedly.

“Lord, yes!” Dr. Letheny’s voice was edgy. “You have been out of the world a long time, Jim, not to know that a fashionable hospital must have all the latest fancies, including the best radio set to be had, with specially made loud-speakers connecting with it in every room. The money that is wasted,” he added bitterly, “on such notions could be employed to a good deal better advantage in other ways. How can we make much headway in research if all our money must be thrown away on—on lawns and flowers—” he waved impatiently toward the hospital—“on expensive apparatus that we seldom if ever use, on eight-thousand-dollar ambulances, on weather-staining bricks, on——”

“On radios,” suggested Gainsay blandly.

Dr. Letheny smiled faintly but the hand that lit a fresh cigarette seemed a little unsteady.

“On radios,” he agreed.

“You are right though, Dr. Letheny.” Dr. Balman, who had apparently been engaged in digesting his dinner, spoke so suddenly that I jumped. He lounged toward the window and stood with his hands in his pockets looking down at St. Ann’s lights.

“You are right,” he repeated. “If I had one-half the money that is thrown away down there the experiment that failed for me this afternoon might have succeeded.” The bitterness in his voice was so grim that I think we all felt a little startled and uncomfortable. All, that is, except Corole, whose feelings are not easily accessible and who was manipulating the coffee machine over by the lamp. Its light brought the flat, gold waves of her hair into relief.

“Here is the coffee,” she said huskily. “As coffee should be: black as night, hot as hell, and sweet as love.” She offered the tiny cup to Gainsay.

Well, the rest of us had heard her say that before and Gainsay did not appear to hear her now. I could see that she was hesitating on the verge of repetition, but she was too wise for that.

“Can’t you stop needless expenditure?” asked Gainsay.

“Stop it?” Dr. Letheny laughed acidly. “Stop it when the hospital is privately endowed and the board of directors a bunch of ignorant, conceited asses! Look at this matter of radium. Nothing must do but that we buy a whole gram of radium. They had heard of radium. Other hospitals had it. Radium we must have and radium we bought. But try to talk to them of research, of discovering a new remedy for an old need, of the necessity for laboratories, for equipment, for study. You might as well try to stop the thunder storm that is coming as to ask them to see anything that is not squarely in front of their fat stomachs.”

“But radium,” said Gainsay mildly, “is a good thing for a hospital to have, isn’t it? I thought it a great discovery.”

“Of course, of course!” broke in Dr. Balman. “But we don’t need that much. Half a gram, a fourth of it—even a sixth of it would have served our purpose. But no! We must spend sixty-five thousand dollars for one tiny gram of radium. Sixty-five thousand dollars! And to my plea for half of that—only half of that money—they laughed. Laughed at study! At research! At laboratories and equipment! And called me a visionary. God! A visionary!”

It must have been that the increasing sultriness of the night and the tension of the approaching storm made us all a little nervous and easily stirred. A curious hush followed Franz Balman’s outbreak, during which I became aware of the heavy breathing of Dr. Hajek near me. I stirred impatiently and moved away. I had never either liked or disliked Fred Hajek, but that night I felt suddenly a sharp distaste for him. The atmosphere in the room seemed unbearably heavy and I shivered a little despite the heat and wondered if my dinner was not going to agree with me.

Gainsay got up, moved to get an ash tray, and sat down again in another chair. I noted that the move brought him nearer Maida, whose fine white profile was visible in the shadow near the window. She did not smoke—not, I believe, from any fastidious prejudice, but merely from distaste—and her hands, delicate yet strong, lay passively on the carved arms of the chair. She was the kind of person whose silences seem thoughtful and neither flat nor detached; a most companionable person to have around.

Corole noted the move, too, for she took my seat next to Hajek and murmured something under her breath to him.

“Are you both experimenting in the same field?” asked Gainsay, his ordinary, easy tone making my disquiet seem uncalled-for and silly.

“No,” said Dr. Letheny shortly.

“No,” said Dr. Balman. He turned abruptly away from the window and sat down at the shadowy end of the davenport; his shirt front thrust itself up in an ungainly hump but he did not appear to care.

“Well,” said Corole, “if I were a millionaire I should give you both the money to work to your heart’s content.”

“Indeed.” Dr. Letheny spoke so satirically that I feared an outburst from our hostess, whose temper was never of the best.

But she surprised me.

“No!” she retracted with disarming frankness. From habit Corole could lie like a trooper, but when she was inclined toward truth-telling she was quite candidly honest. “No,” she went on, “if I had a million dollars I should spend it—oh, how I should spend it! Silks and furs and jewels and servants and cars and cities and——”

“By that time it would be gone,” observed Dr. Letheny drily.

“Maybe,” Corole laughed huskily. “But how gloriously gone.”

“I suppose,” began Fred Hajek, with a little of the awkwardness that assails one who has remained silent a long time while others of the group are talking, “I suppose that idea is a sort of unacknowledged fairy dream hidden in everyone’s mind.”

“Of course.” Dr. Letheny’s voice grated to my ears. “Everybody wants money. Usually for reasons such as Corole has so charmingly admitted.”

“Not always,” disagreed Gainsay. “You and—er—Dr. Balman have just agreed that you both needed it for research.”

“A selfish reason, though,” replied Dr. Letheny. “We get the same pleasurable reaction out of study and science that Corole does out of clothes and jewels and—cream in general. Miss Keate, over there,” he nodded toward me, “gets the same kick out of hard work and a smooth-running hospital routine. Only her—demands——are not so expensive.”

His tone irritated me. It may be true that I am considered something of a martinet, especially among the student nurses, but somebody has to see to things.

“Nonsense,” I spoke sharply. “I want money just as much as anybody.”

I suppose my words rang sincere, for Dr. Letheny sat up.

“What is your repressed desire, Sarah Keate?” he demanded with just the shade of amusement in his voice that always riled me. “Come on, out with it! Do you long for the gay night life? Or have you secret urges to become a front-page sensation?”

And I must say that, in the light of what was to occur, it was remarkable that he said just that.

“She might make a splendid aviatrix,” said Jim Gainsay, smiling into the dusk.

After that I was not going to tell them that above all things I longed to travel and that everybody knows travel costs money. I said curtly:

“Everybody wants money.”

“How about you, Maida?” broke in Corole rather maliciously.

Maida is, as a rule, almost too perfect at the art of concealing her emotions. It may have been that the semi-darkness of the room concealed an intended air of frivolousness, or it may have been that the threat of the approaching storm plucked at her nerves and pierced her habitual armour of reserve. At any rate her answer was unexpected.

“Money!” she said. “Money! I think I would give my very soul for money!”

Of course, I knew she didn’t mean that. But Dr. Letheny shot her a glance that fairly pierced the dusk, Corole laughed a little metallic ripple, and Jim Gainsay turned straightway around in his chair to face Maida’s shadowed eyes.

“I haven’t any money,” he said directly and quite as if Maida had asked him a question, though I think the others were too preoccupied to observe this. “I haven’t any money at all.”

“And are you happy without it, Jim?” asked Corole, her warm voice caressing.

“Well . . .” Jim Gainsay paused. “I was, until lately.”

He was still speaking to Maida. I believe Dr. Letheny understood that somewhat singular fact, also, for he spoke so quietly that there was a suggestion of deliberate restraint about his words.

“And what do you intend to do in the face of this sudden realization?”

“Make some money,” replied Jim Gainsay simply.

Dr. Letheny laughed—not pleasantly.

“But my dear fellow, is it so simple as that?”

“It should not be difficult.” Gainsay did not appear to be disturbed by the perceptible edge of irony in Dr. Letheny’s questions.

“Owing to the fact that several billions of people over the face of the earth are engaged in profitless efforts in that direction, will you tell us just how you propose to accomplish it with such expedition?”

“Certainly not. If I can manage to lay my hands on—say—fifty thousand I can make—oh, as much money as I want. I can do it. And I will.” He was grave and yet quite casual. A mere matter of information for Maida. If she wanted money he would see that she got it and that was that! It seemed so clear to me that I felt something very like embarrassment, though neither Maida nor Jim Gainsay seemed disturbed.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” mused Dr. Letheny softly. “That is quite a lot of money. Many a man has failed for its—inaccessibility.”

“I’ll get it all right,” said Jim Gainsay.

“And when you get it what are you going to do with it? How are you going to make it grow into as much money as you want?”

“Contracting.” There was an undercurrent in the short reply that warned Dr. Letheny off.

Corole laughed again.

“Funny!” she said. “Every single one of us has confessed to a fervent desire for money. That is, all but Franz and Dr. Hajek. And we all know that Franz would give his very eyes—no, he needs them for experiment—ten years of his life, then, for money to carry on those same precious experiments.”

“It is a good thing we are all law-abiding citizens,” I remarked drily.

“I think I shall be on the safe side, though, and lock up my jewels to-night!” said Corole.

“Don’t be a fool,” observed Dr. Letheny.

Corole’s topaz eyes caught a glint of angry green light.

“Why, really, Louis, being what one can’t help is better, at any rate, than longing for what one can’t get.”

Her somewhat stupid reply did not, to my mind, warrant its effect. Dr. Letheny moved suddenly upright in his chair, his thin lips drawn tight over his teeth.

“Until later, dear cousin.” The words had a sharp edge of fury. “Until later. We have guests at present.”

I could only suppose that the stifling atmosphere had disturbed Dr. Letheny’s always hair-trigger nerves. Otherwise he had not been so needlessly vulgar. He was a brilliant man with a cutting tongue, but gossip had whispered that what Corole lacked in the way of brains she more than made up for in feline cunning of attack. This was the first time, however, that I had heard the two ill-assorted housemates come to open and bad-mannered warfare.

Dr. Hajek relieved the strained silence that naturally followed the little contretemps.

“I hear that you used the radium to-day.” He had a peculiarly inflectionless manner of speech that made him seem heavy and dull.

“Yes.” Dr. Letheny rose and pulled the curtain still farther from the window. “Torrid night, isn’t it? Yes, we are trying it for old Mr. Jackson.” He paused. “I don’t know that it will do any good,” he added callously. “But we may as well try it. By the way, Miss Keate, I shall be in shortly after midnight to see how the patient is getting on. You might leave the south door unlocked for me. Let me see—he is in Room 18, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“So you are going to Russia on another bridge project, Jim?” Dr. Letheny was again master of himself.

“What—oh, yes! Yes.” Jim Gainsay started a little as if Dr. Letheny had recalled him to a forgotten fact.

“Will it be a long stay?”

“Why, yes, probably. It should take about two or three years. It will be an interesting job. The preliminaries are rather sketchy, but it looks as though there might be some problems involved.”

He spoke in an oddly detached way, as if he were not much interested in the subject, and it was not surprising that the conversation flattened out again. Presently Corole suggested bridge and even made up a table, but Dr. Balman definitely refused to play and Jim Gainsay, being engaged in watching Maida’s eyelashes, did not appear to hear Corole’s suggestion that he make a fourth, so Dr. Letheny made a reluctant partner for me against Corole and Dr. Hajek. However, we played only a few desultory hands until Maida and Gainsay drifted over to the window and fell into a low-voiced conversation, when Dr. Letheny, who had been darting quick glances in that direction, trumped my ace, flung down his cards, said it was too rotten hot to play and, paying no attention to Corole’s protests, went to the piano.

Dr. Letheny was a discriminative musician of far more than amateur skill, and the great, jarring, Moscow bells of the C Sharp Minor Prelude presently surged over the room. I am a practical, matter-of-fact woman and I have never been able to account for the strange disquietude that crept over me as I listened. It was the strangest thing in a strange and unreal evening. The couple at the window turned and moved closer together. Corole’s flat eyes caught the light like a cat’s. Dr. Balman stared at nothing from the shadows and worried his beard. Only Dr. Hajek was unmoved by that passionate sweep of sound.

All at once the room was intolerable to me. I twisted about in my chair and fought down a childish desire to run from its heat and breathlessness. And then the keys under Dr. Letheny’s white fingers slipped into the higher notes of the second movement and a hot, fetid breath of air from the hushed night billowed the curtain a little and touched my hot face and heightened the nightmare that had taken possession of me.

By the time the climax had carried us all along with it in its torrent, and the Doctor had sat, in the hush that followed the last note, for a long moment before he turned to us again,—by that time little beads of perspiration shone all along the backs of my hands and my heart was pumping as if I had been running a race.

I rose.

“I must go,” I said, my voice breaking harshly into the silence. “I must go. It is nearly twelve.”

“Yes,” said Maida. “Yes. We must go.”

Somehow we got away. I remember being vaguely surprised when Jim Gainsay merely took Maida’s hand for a conventional instant, although I’m sure I don’t know what I had expected.

Maida and I walked slowly, feeling our way through the great, black velvet curtain that was the night. The hospital was now darkened and the path twisted unexpectedly. The air was as heavy with the presage of storm, there under the trees, as it had been in Corole’s lamp-lit house. The sky was thick and black with not the glimmer of a star showing through. The katydids and crickets were all hushed as if waiting. The path was hot under our thin-soled slippers, the alfalfa sickeningly sweet in its warm breath, the shadows of the thickets were dense and not a leaf stirred. I know that orchard and those clusters of trees and elderberries and sumac as well as I know the twists and turns of the old hospital corridors, and never until that night did I catch my breath when my hand brushed against a leaf, or take a long sigh of relief when we emerged from those suddenly unfriendly thickets into the silence of the long, night-lighted corridor of the south wing.

Up in the everyday surroundings of the nurses’ dormitory I still failed to shake off the sense of the unreal that had come over me. Together we changed into our crisp, white uniforms. I remember we talked of silly, inconsequential things—such as the sogginess of the bread pudding we had had for lunch, and the new cuff-links that Maida was inserting into her cuffs. They were small squares of lapis-lazuli edged in engraved white gold. Lovely though they were, they yet contrived to be simple and dignified at the same time.

“I like lapis,” said Maida without much interest. “I like things that are real.” She was adjusting her proud, white cap as she spoke. In spite of the businesslike white linen that became her so well, she was still the flushed and vivid Maida of the blue and crystal-frosted dinner gown, whose eyes had grown starry under Jim Gainsay’s regard. I sighed as I pinned on my own cap. I had always felt that if love came to Maida it would be swift and compelling.

I thrust in the pin too forcefully and withdrew my scratched thumb with an irritated exclamation. I had read somewhere that thin old maids were pathetic and fat old maids gross and all old maids sentimental, and had resolved to be none of the three, myself.

So, I was not in the best of moods as I wound my watch, took my way to the south wing, and stopped at the desk for a glance at the charts. If only the storm would break and give us a breath of fresh, cool air.

The two nurses going off duty were very evidently glad to be relieved.

“It is a queer night,” said one of them, Olma Flynn. “Makes me feel creepy.”

“H’m,” I spoke brusquely. “Likely you have been eating green apples again.” And she flounced indignantly away.

2. In Room 18

That night began much the same as other nights and with no suggestion of the events it was to unfold. There was the usual twelve-o’clock stir of drinks and temperatures and pulses and hot pillows to be turned and electric fans to be brought. The only unusual thing, and that was natural enough, was that the sick patients had turned restless under the heat and the breathless hint of storm and were fretful and somewhat peevish. We were very busy for some time, but I remembered to leave the south door unlocked for Dr. Letheny’s call.

It happened that I was in the corridor when he came in about twelve-thirty. The gleaming white and black of his pearl-studded shirt front and smooth-fitting dinner jacket were incongruous in the bare, night-lighted hall, with its long length of white walls, shadowy now in the darkness that was relieved only by the shaded light over the chart desk at the far end, and the tiny red signal lights that glowed here and there over sick-room doors. A hospital is never a cheerful place, especially at night, and its long, dark corridors with black voids for doors, and its faint odours of ether and antiseptics and sickness are not, to say the least, conducive to good spirits.

Dr. Letheny was still nervous and irritable. He gave Mr. Jackson a rather cursory glance, felt his pulse for a moment, and examined the dressing. The trouble he was trying to cure with radium was in the patient’s left breast and the radium itself, placed as is usual in a sort of box that is especially made for the purpose, was arranged in such a manner that its rays would penetrate the afflicted area. It was held in place by means of wide straps of adhesive, and would have been, to the layman, a strange-appearing affair. All was well and the patient seemingly reacting as favourably as might be expected, so Dr. Letheny did not linger. After rearranging the pillows and turning out the light over the bed, I followed the Doctor into the corridor. He paused for a few moments, asking me unimportant questions as to various patients in the wing, and smoking rapidly, regardless of the rules which he himself had made against smoking in the hospital. More than once I caught his gaze travelling past me down the corridor toward the diet kitchen and drug room, and finally he asked me outright if Miss Day was on duty.

“Yes,” I said. “She is about—somewhere in the wing,” thinking, as I replied, that I had not seen Maida for a few moments. Doubtless, however, she was busy with some patient, or paying her promised visit to Sonny.

He lingered for a little after that, but presently strolled to the south door and disappeared. I did not follow him and lock the door according to custom; it was breathlessly hot, as I have said, and we needed every atom of air that we could get. Later, when the rain came, I should close it.

An errand took me to the diet kitchen; as I passed down the length of the darkened corridor I glanced into the open doors along the way but did not catch a glimpse of Maida’s white uniform. The place was very hot and very still and the vases of flowers along the walls, on the floor outside various doors, sent up a hot, sickening breath. I snapped on the light in the diet kitchen, wishing as I did so that there were more lights in the corridor outside. I had to search for and open a fresh bottle of beef extract, so it took me some time to prepare the beef tea, but at length I started into the corridor with the cup in hand. As I reached the door I glanced down the hall toward the south door just in time to see a white uniform gleam against the blackness of the night as it entered from the porch outside. It was Maida, of that I was sure, for her movements were unmistakable, and just as the thought ran through my mind that she had been outside trying to get a breath of fresh air, I also realized that I had no spoon to accompany the beef tea and turned back into the diet kitchen. Someone had cleaned the silver drawer that day, and it took me a moment or two to find a spoon, and when I entered the corridor again I met Maida face to face.

In the dim light it seemed to me that she was very white, but in that night-lighted corridor nothing retains its normal colour, so I thought nothing of it.

“I was wondering where you had gone to,” I said carelessly as I passed her.

She regarded my casual remark as an inquiry.

“I—I’ve been with Sonny,” she said. Her voice was unsteady.

“Poor boy, he is having a hard time,” I murmured and went on. It was not until I was standing beside Eleven watching him drink the beef tea that I recalled with a little start that she had not been with Sonny, that I had seen her with my own eyes coming into the corridor from the porch.

Beef tea and Eleven did not go well together; in fact, a few moments after drinking it he was violently sick and for about a quarter of an hour I was fully occupied with him. I had closed the door into the corridor at first symptoms of his unhappy reaction, so that the disturbance should not arouse patients in near-by rooms. I stayed with him until he was back on his pillows again, quiet and exhausted, then I turned out the light, opened the door into the corridor, and left him. The hall was silent and dark and not a signal light gleamed in the whole length.

I felt a little ill myself from the heat and stifling air, and judging it to be a good time, I slipped quietly to the south door and let myself out onto the little colonial porch. The air was a shade less fetid there and I remember standing for a moment or two at the curved railing. The dim light coming from the door back of me made a little circle on the porch, faintly lighter than the surrounding night, and beyond that stretched thick blackness. Far below me toward the west twinkled vaguely the lights of the city and above on the hillside I caught the barest glimpse of green light through the trees; it was shining from Dr. Letheny’s study. All else was impenetrable darkness.

I could not have stood there for more than five minutes when without any warning an inexplicable thing occurred.

There was a sudden, sharp little whisper of motion from somewhere back of me, something flew past my shoulder, caught for a fleeting second the reflection of a light from the corridor back of me, and was gone into the dense shadows of the shrubbery, beyond the railing.

The thing was gone before I could realize that it had actually happened.

I started, drew in my breath sharply, and stifled the exclamation that rose to my lips. I stared in the direction the thing, whatever it was, had taken and strained my eyes to see into the thick black void that surrounded the porch. It was exactly as if an arrow, small and sharp and gleaming, had been shot from somewhere behind me into the shrubbery. But no one shoots arrows from hospitals in the dead of night.

I rubbed my eyes angrily and, but for the sharp little whisper of sound the thing made as it passed me, would have doubted their evidence. But that sound, coupled with the flash of light, was conclusive. Someone had deliberately thrown some small article with all the force at his command across the porch and into the shrubbery that extends downward into the orchard. It had come from one of the windows at either side of the door or from the door itself. Hastily in my thoughts I ran over the patients then in the wing. Not one of them was able to walk. Maida was the only person in the wing who could have been about, and what on earth was Maida throwing out into the night!

Feeling this to be a curious circumstance that should be investigated I took a few steps toward the path that leads from the east corner of the little porch. It was very dark there, and without pausing to reflect that in the night I could never find the thing that so puzzled me and that was now hidden somewhere in the orchard, I groped for the iron railing and made my way cautiously down the two or three steps. I paused at the path, my ear caught by the sound of footsteps. And at the very instant, the sudden little rush of sound came closer swiftly and someone running at top speed along the outside wall of the hospital collided with me, gasped, swore, caught me in mid-air and set me on my feet again and was gone, leaving me trying to get my breath and dazedly righting my cap. I could hear his footsteps still running along the little path toward the bridge.

“Well——” I said. “Well——” and found myself both angry and frightened. People have no right to run around hospitals at night, knocking middle-aged nurses about and swearing and what not. Who was this midnight prowler?

Evidently the man was up to no good purpose and as evidently he was in a hurry to get away. My heart began to beat rapidly as I walked along the hospital north in the direction the man had come from. But the windows above me all seemed dark and undisturbed. Built on the slope of the hill as St. Ann’s is, the windows are at varying heights from the ground, some of them not more than three or four feet above it, but I doubted if an intruder could have made his way into that silent wing without arousing it. I walked as far as the lighted window of the diet kitchen. It, too, was open and I could see the top of Maida’s white cap as she stood at the farther end of the small room.

All seemed quiet and I dismissed the half-formed notion of rousing Higgins, the janitor and so-called night-watchman, and demanding a thorough search of the premises. I was still uneasy, however, as I retraced my steps, and I drew back into the shadow of the orchard in order to see into the windows of the wing without, possibly, myself being seen.

It was just as I passed the thick clump of elderberry bushes about midway of the long wing that my foot struck something in the grass that gave a dully metallic sound. I reached over to fumble in the grass and picked up a small, flat object, smooth and hard. I turned it rapidly over in my hands. It was pitchy dark there in the shadows and the air was extraordinarily close. I slipped the object I held into my pocket for future examination and as I did so I sniffed. There was something in the air—some familiar odour—but something entirely out of place in an apple orchard. It was—a swift vision of the operating room rose before me and I realized that my nostrils had caught a faint but unmistakable odour of ether.

Ether in an apple orchard! And in the middle of the night! Why, it was impossible! Something in the heated air, some mingling of alfalfa and sweet clover and growing things had combined to deceive me. I shrugged, tried to laugh, and feeling all at once that absurd fear that something is about to clutch at your heels, I hurried through the dense shadows toward the little porch. It was still deserted.

I recall glancing up at the impenetrable sky and catching, away off toward the south, a faint gleam of lightning. Surely the storm would break soon and I would be relieved of this feeling of oppression that was strangely mingled with something very like fear.

The corridor, too, was still deserted. Maida was not in sight, and as I looked a red signal light down toward the chart desk clicked. I went to answer it, my starched skirts whispering along the hushed hall.

It was Three, begging for a bromide, and it took me a few moments to convince her of the fact that she didn’t in the least need it.

Then I sat down at the desk, which is at the north end of the corridor, opposite the south door, with all the shadowy length of gray-white walls and dark doors of the corridor intervening. A shaded light over this desk is the sole illumination and a person seated at the desk faces the chart rack and has her back turned to the corridor. It remained hot and very still and I wondered if the wind that accompanies our western thunder storms would not soon rise.

I had not more than entered Three’s pulse and the time—one-thirty—when a sudden sound, dull and heavy, brought me standing, facing the corridor and unaccountably startled. Only the bare walls met my eyes. Perhaps the south door had blown shut. It had sounded like the muffled bang of a door—or possibly like a window that had dropped to the sill. The chart in my hand, I walked quickly through the corridor to the south door. It was still open and I felt no breeze.

As near as I could tell the sound that had aroused me had come from this end of the wing. The door of Room 17 was open and a glance assured me that the window was still open for I could see the dim shadow of the sash. The door of Eighteen was closed, however, so I opened it cautiously in order not to wake Mr. Jackson. I did not enter the room; I stood there only for a moment, holding the door half open and peering through the dim light from the corridor. The patient was lying quiet and the window seemed to be open, so I closed the door as gently as I had opened it and took my way down the corridor again.

And when I reached the chart desk I found that my knees were trembling and there was a little damp beading under my cap.

“It is the night,” I assured myself. “It is a nerve-racking night. I shall suffocate if I don’t get some air.”

But nevertheless I felt nervous and ill at ease. I forced myself to study the charts, and in the middle of Eleven’s temperature chart I recalled the small flat object I had found in the orchard. I was in the very act of drawing it from my pocket when, with a swoop of wind through the corridor, a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, the storm broke.

I ran the whole length of the corridor. The wind was sweeping along it with such fury that my skirts were pulled back tight around me, my cap slipped back on my head, and several top-heavy vases of flowers must have blown over for we found them so later. With some difficulty I closed the door. As I fastened it, leaving the key in the lock in my haste, I could see through the panes of glass the first great spatters of rain, and down below the hospital on the little back road shone the lights of a hurrying automobile. Then they were gone and another flash of lightning nearly blinded me and there was a sharp crackle and sputter. Simultaneously the light went out as if by black magic, leaving me alone in the dark with eighteen windows to get down and eighteen patients to reassure.

I knew in an instant what had occurred; the power line from the city had been struck and the fuses burnt out or some such matter. Where was Maida? The rain was coming in torrents by the time I had felt my way into Room 17 and closed the window. Occasional lightning aided me as I groped my way to Room 18, crossed it and pulled down that window. As I turned toward the door again a bright flash of lightning lit up the whole room and in the brief second I saw that the patient had not roused in spite of the tumult of the storm. He lay still. Too still.

Then the light was gone and, scarcely knowing what I did, I reached the bed and put my hand on his face and sought his pulse.

A seasoned nurse knows when death has come. Even in the gibbering darkness with the storm outside crashing against the window I knew at once that our patient was dead.

Standing there for what seemed an eternity, but what was actually not more than a moment or two, my mind raced over the situation and strove to comprehend it. There was no reason for his death of which I knew. Barring the affliction for which he was being treated and which in its present stage had not been critical, our patient had been in good health only an hour or so ago. What had caused this? It could not have been heart failure for his heart had been sound.

I must have a light. I must call Dr. Letheny. I must—— There was the sound of windows being lowered. I found my way to the door. If I could make Maida hear me—but, of course, I couldn’t through the confusion of patients calling out from fright as they found the lights failing to go on, and the constant roll of thunder and crashing of rain. The flashes of lightning were frequent and I caught a fleeting glimpse of Maida crossing the corridor farther down the hall.

It would be of no use to call her; furthermore, she was busy. I disliked leaving Eighteen with no one in the room, but I must have a light. I ran down the length of the corridor—it seemed long and unfamiliar—groped in a drawer of the cupboard in the diet kitchen, found the burnt end of a candle and some matches, and flew back to Room 18. At the door I met Maida. Our faces gleamed eerily in the lightning and then vanished into darkness.

“Isn’t this awful!” she cried. “Where were you! Every window in the wing was open. And the lights have gone out! What—what in the world are you doing?”

She was at my elbow in Room 18. My fingers shook so that I could scarcely light the candle, and when I did succeed it made only a feeble little flicker that did not dispel the shadows.

She followed me to the bed.

“Why, Sarah! Is he——” She reached over to place her hand on his face as I had done. “He is dead!”

Setting the candle on the table, I pushed aside the covers to find his heart. If there were the least flicker of life, something could yet be done. But there was not.

It was as I drew back that I made the astounding discovery.

The box that held the radium was gone! Adhesive and all had been stripped clean!

“Look——” I tried to cry out but a roll of thunder that shook the very foundations drowned my voice. I pointed with a finger that shook and held the futile little flame nearer, while Maida searched frantically among the sheets.

It was a useless search. That I knew even in the moment of lowering my candle to look under the bed. The dead man had not torn from himself that box with the wide strips of adhesive.

Arising from my knees I stared across the narrow bed into Maida’s panic-stricken eyes.

The very storm outside quieted for a second as if to give my words significance.

“He is dead,” I whispered. “And the radium is gone!”

She nodded, her hands at her throat, her face as white as her cap.

The tiny flame wavered and jumped and threatened to go out, the shadows in the room crept nearer, the gusts of wind and rain beat upon the black window pane with renewed fervour.

“We must telephone to Dr. Letheny. Then get lights and see to the wing. Will you go down to the office and telephone to the Doctor? I shall stay—with this.”

Maida’s eyes widened and she flung out her hands with an odd gesture of panic.

“No,” she stammered. “No. I—I can’t call Dr. Letheny!”

Not knowing what to say I stared at her. Suddenly she straightened her shoulders and mastered her agitation.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll call him immediately.”

I was too disturbed to worry over Maida’s aversion to telephoning to Dr. Letheny, although it was to recur to me later. I set the candle down again, wishing that the lights would come on and that my knees would not shake.

It was clear to me, even in those first terrifying moments, that the radium had been stolen. And a hideous conjecture was slowly settling upon me. It did not seem possible that my patient had died a natural death!

What had caused his death?

It is strange how one’s hair prickles at the roots when one is frightened. My hair stirred and I peered fearfully about the room. A curious sense of something evil and loathsome near at hand was creeping over me. The room, however, was as bare as any hospital room. I even took the candle in my hand, and holding my teeth tight together to restrain a disposition toward chattering, I made a circuit of the room, holding the candle into the corners. Of course, there was nothing there. Indeed, there was scarcely any place to hide in the whole room. There were the usual shallow closets, two of them, barely large enough for a patient’s travelling bag and clothes. I opened one closet which held a bag and a light overcoat. The other one was locked and the key gone, probably lost by some student nurse.

The candle was dripping hot wax on my hand so I placed it again on a saucer on the table.

Maida had been gone for some time, surely time enough to rouse the whole hospital staff. A thousand fears crossed my mind while I stood there waiting; my eyes kept travelling from one corner of the room to the other, and the feeling of a presence near me other than that of the dead man on the bed became stronger with the dragging seconds.

I was beginning to think that I could remain no longer in that fear-haunted room, with only the ghastly flickering of the candle-light for company, when there was a quick rush of footsteps and Maida was in the room, panting, her eyes black and frightened.

“Dr. Letheny is out,” she cried. “Corole didn’t know where he was. She said he wasn’t anywhere in the house. She thought he had gone for a walk in the orchard and got caught in the storm.”

“A fine time to go for a walk,” I cried, fright making me irritable.

“So then I telephoned to Dr. Balman,” went on Maida hurriedly. “It was so dark I couldn’t see the directory, so I had to ask Information for the number. He finally answered and said he would be right out. It’s as dark as a black cat all over the building.”

“Did you call Dr. Hajek?”

“Yes. That is, I knocked at his door and called him several times but couldn’t wake him. Girls from other wings are running around in the dark, there near the general office. Nobody has lights and the bell that connects with the basement is out of order. At least, they can’t rouse Higgins.”

I thought rapidly. Such a situation! No lights, a storm, frightened patients—it only needed the news of the radium theft and this strange death to complete our demoralization.

“We can’t both leave this room,” I thought aloud. “We must not leave him alone. His death is so strange—so——”

Maida must have been struck with something in my manner for she gripped my arm.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I replied with difficulty, speaking through oddly stiff lips, “I mean that—I’m afraid this is—is murder.”

She shrank back, her face as white as the dishevelled sheets.

“Not—that!”

“You see, he was in good condition. And combined with the theft of the radium—Oh! I know it is a fearful thing to suspect. But what explanation is there?”

“Who could have done it? How——”

“I don’t know.” With an effort I pulled myself together, forced myself to think. “We have no time to think of that now. We must keep things going—get a doctor.” I paused, eyeing her dubiously. “Could you stay here with—with it—while I go to the office, rouse Dr. Hajek and the janitor, and get some sort of lights?”

She glanced from the bed, where her horrified eyes had fastened themselves, to the feeble ray of the candle.

“The candle is almost burnt out,” she whispered.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll hurry.”

Her lips tightened to a thin white line.

“Hurry.”

Once groping my way through that dark corridor I was vaguely surprised to find my hands like ice and my face damp. My mind was whirling but one thought was predominant: I must not leave Maida alone for long in that terrifying room with what it held, I must hurry.

As I turned into the corridor running east and west, that connects the south wing with the main portion of the hospital, the storm burst upon the place with renewed savagery. At another time the fury of the thunder and lightning and wind and rain would have appalled me, but then it seemed all in a piece with what I feared had happened.

I have only a chaotic memory of colliding with various other nurses, of ringing for the janitor, of calling the Electric Power Company only to hear a pert-voiced operator tell me that the wires must be down in our direction, of being afraid that the matches the nurses were lighting would set fire to the whole place, and of bruising my knuckles on Dr. Hajek’s door. He finally opened it, and I was so unstrung by that time that at the sound of his slow voice I clutched into the darkness with both hands. My touch encountered his coat, which was damp.

“Go to Room 18,” I stammered, half-sobbing from fear. “Hurry, Doctor. Room 18 in the south wing.”

“It is dark. Can’t you turn on the lights?” he said stupidly.

“The lights have gone out. The storm—— Hurry!” I believe I pushed him toward the door. Somebody had found a lamp and the hall was full of weird, wavering shadows.

“What is it? What has happened?” asked some nurse at my elbow.

I have never known what I replied; I remember only her frightened, pale face. But somehow I restored things to a semblance of order, mercifully thought of some lamps and candles that were in the storeroom, unearthed a couple of flashlights and sent someone to wake Olma Flynn to help out in the south wing. Then, taking the flashlights, I hurried back to the wing.

At the door of Room 18 I paused.

Maida was standing beside a table, staring downward, her face paper-white; her sleeves had been rolled up and a wisp of dark hair across her cheek gave her a curiously dishevelled appearance. Dr. Hajek was standing at the foot of the bed; he was gripping the foot-rail with such force that the knuckles on his small hands showed white. Dr. Balman had arrived; he was sitting at the other side of the bed and I did not see him until I stepped into the room. His stethoscope dangled from his hands, his gleaming raincoat dripped moisture steadily on the floor. He, too, was staring downward.

No one moved as I approached the bed. It was as if some evil spell held us all staring at the dead man. And through that brooding silence, broken only by the hurling rain and wind outside, I knew as well as I shall ever know anything that I was right. That the man there on the bed had been murdered!

My throat was very dry. I had to make several efforts and finally achieved a single word:

“How—”

Dr. Balman glanced at me, apparently noting my presence for the first time.

“Overdose of morphine,” he said.

“Morphine!” I was shocked out of the numbness that had enveloped me. “Morphine. But he was not to have morphine. How do you know?”

With a laconic gesture he showed me the tiny hypodermic scar on the patient’s arm.

“That—and look here—the pupils of his eyes,” Dr. Balman drew the lids upward gently. “As well as his general condition. You know——”

I nodded slowly. Morphine!

It was then that a strange thing happened. We were all staring at the small wound, else we should not have seen the little pin-prick of red that crept slowly from it. It was not a drop by any means, it was barely enough to be visible, but it brought to our minds the old superstition: a corpse bleeds when its murderer is near. A cold shiver crept up my back as I looked, and Dr. Balman sprang to his feet with a hoarse word or two, and Maida cried out, gasping, and started back, and even phlegmatic Dr. Hajek muttered something under his breath and drew his hand across his eyes.

With an effort I controlled myself. This sort of thing would turn us all into gibbering idiots and there was much to be done.

“Dr. Balman,” I said, my voice sounding strange to my own ears, “Dr. Letheny is caught out in the storm somewhere and we have not yet been able to find him. Mr. Jackson was not to have morphine: it was not ordered and moreover at twelve-thirty he was all right. He has evidently been—killed—so that someone could steal the radium. There will be—confusion. Someone must take charge from now on—and since Dr. Letheny is gone——”

“Leave things to us, Miss Keate,” said Dr. Balman at once. “See to your wing as usual and Dr. Hajek and I will do what is necessary.”

“Do you intend to call the coroner?” I asked.

“Certainly. I shall telephone at once. It means police—detectives—all that, but this is a terrible thing. Steps must be taken immediately. A delay in such a matter——”

“Here I am, Miss Keate,” said Olma Flynn from the doorway. “I hurried to get dressed. What——” her pale eyes travelled past me to the bed. “Why—why what is it? He is—dead!” Her voice rose. I suppose our very attitudes and gray faces told her the truth, for suddenly she began to scream. I seized her by the arm none too gently, clapped my other hand over her mouth and pulled her outside, closing the door behind me.

But it was too late. Others had heard her screams, and there was no keeping the thing secret, especially as some prowling nurse heard Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek telephoning for the police and the coroner. The story was over the hospital in ten minutes and only the strictest measures prevented a panic. Terror-stricken nurses crowding into the halls and wing, the demands of the sick to whom the excitement seemed to have communicated itself, flaring, inadequate lamps and candles and their little flickering circles of light that made frightened faces whiter and the surrounding gloom blacker, horrified questions that no one could answer, stark fear in every pair of eyes—all this made it an hour not soon forgotten.

Fortunately Maida and I found that our own patients had not suffered from our enforced absence from duty. It was a difficult matter, however, to calm some of the more nervous ones and keep the knowledge of what had happened from reaching their ears. Olma Flynn’s assistance was of the slightest as she refused to stir three feet from Maida or me, and her hands shook so that she spilled everything she touched.

We were very busy and I did not see the coroner and the police when they arrived and went directly to Room 18. Along about half-past three I slipped into the diet kitchen and made some very strong coffee which I shared with Maida and Olma Flynn. We felt a little better after that though still weak and sick and controlling our fears by sheer strength of will.

Somehow the weary gray hours dragged along. Dawn came through still gusty rain and wind and the cold light crept reluctantly into the sick rooms. Breakfast was late that morning owing to the cook’s not being able to find enough candles for adequate lights, but the day nurses finally came on duty, white and fear-stricken over what the night had held.

By that time, however, policemen were all over the place and I must say that their broad, blue backs gave me a welcome sense of security. Dr. Letheny had not turned up yet; at least, if he had I had not seen him.

The breakfast trays came up at last and Maida, Olma Flynn, and I washed our hands and faces and descended to the dining room in the basement. We said little. The candles on the long table flickered; the rain beat against the small windows; our uniforms were wrinkled and looked cold; our eyes were hollow and our faces drawn and gray, and already we were starting nervously at sudden sounds and were beginning to cast furtive glances over our shoulders as if to be sure there was nothing there.

But it was not until I had finished drinking some very black coffee and playing with my toast that the reason for our strained silence made itself clear to me.

Only someone connected with the hospital could have known that the radium was out of the safe and in use in Room 18. Only a doctor or a nurse would have known how to administer morphine with a hypodermic syringe.

It might be—anyone! It might be one of us!

The thought threatened that remnant of courage I still maintained. I rose, pushing back my chair. It scraped along the floor and at the sound heads jerked in my direction too quickly and someone cried out nervously.

I hurried from the room, up the stairs and to my room in the nurses’ dormitory. I am not ashamed to say that I locked the door. But though I needed rest I could not sleep.

3. Dr. Letheny Does Not Return

From sheer fatigue, however, I must have dozed for I awoke at the sound of a repeated knocking at the door. It was a frightened little student nurse wanting to know if all training classes and lectures were to be suspended.

“Suspended?” I said, the horror of the past night sweeping over me. “Suspended? I—why, Dr. Letheny will tell you.”

She blinked.

“But Dr. Letheny—we—they—nobody knows where Dr. Letheny has gone.”

“What!” I was fully awake.

“No, ma’am. They can’t find him anywhere.” Frightened though she was, she yet appeared to take a naïve relish in being the first to tell me the news. “They can’t find him at all. Miss Letheny has telephoned everywhere that he might be and the police are working on it and they have been asking us all kinds of questions.”

I reached for a fresh uniform.

“I’ll come down immediately,” I said. “About the training classes, did you speak to Dr. Balman?”

“No. Miss Dotty said to find out if you knew what was to be done.” Which was like Miss Dotty, she being amiable but not very clear-thinking.

“Dr. Balman is Dr. Letheny’s assistant. I have nothing to do with it.”

The little student nurse rustled away and ten minutes later, refreshed by a bath and a clean uniform, I followed her.

I found the main portion of the hospital fairly shuddering with excitement. To my extreme annoyance it appeared that the moronic fraction of our nursing staff was beginning to take a melancholy satisfaction in the tumult and posing freely for the reporters who, with their flashlight affairs, were swarming over the whole place. I might say here and now that I soon stopped that and did not mince matters in so doing, though I could not prevent the headlines that had already found their way into the city newspapers.

In the main office Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek, both looking worn and haggard, were literally surrounded by our board of directors who, it seemed, had descended in a body and were determined to hold somebody responsible for the terrible thing that had occurred. I learned later that there was some trouble in convincing them that Mr. Jackson’s death was not due to a mistake on the part of the nurses. Some policemen were in the room, too, and the chief of police, himself, a burly fellow who looked habitually as if his darkest suspicions were about to be verified.

This expression intensified itself as I entered the room, which, by the way, was the first indication of a fact that later became all too painfully evident, namely that I, Sarah Keate, occupied a prominent place in the list of suspects, for had I not been in the south wing? Had I not been in a position to administer the morphine that caused the patient’s death? Had I not been the one to find him?

One or two of the board had the grace to rise as I entered, but most of them were too agitated to remember their manners.

“What is this about Dr. Letheny?” I began.

“Are you Miss Keate?” asked the chief of police.

“Yes,” I replied, none too graciously.

“We were just about to send for you,” he informed me. “Now suppose you tell us everything you know of this affair. Mind, I say everything.”

I turned to Dr. Balman.

“Hasn’t Dr. Letheny returned yet?”

He shook his head slowly.

“Come, come, Miss Keate,” said the chief.

“Doesn’t Miss Letheny know where he is?” I insisted anxiously.

The patient in Room 18

The Patient in Room 18

Contents

1. An Unpleasant Dinner Party

2. In Room 18

3. Dr. Letheny Does Not Return