1. An Unpleasant Dinner PartySt. 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 asRoom 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,howI 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.
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 asRoom 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,howI 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.