2. In Room 18That 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—Ican’tcall 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.
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—Ican’tcall 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.