9. Under the Barberry BushI left rather abruptly. But on the darkening path toward St. Ann’s I decided that Corole could not have heard our conversation. Feeling that I must get these last two pieces of news, as well as the occurrence of the previous night to O’Leary as soon as possible, I walked rapidly along through the fog. I crossed the little bridge and was hurrying through the apple orchard when I came face to face with O’Leary.“You are the very person I want to see, Miss Keate,” he said at once.Taking my arm he drew me a few steps from the path; he motioned and following his gesture I found I had a view of the south door and small colonial porch.“Tell me, Miss Keate, exactly where you were standing the night of June seventh when the—er—arrow-like affair was thrown over your shoulder?”“I had truly forgotten that—I should have told you.”“That’s all right,” he brushed my apology aside. “Can you recall about where you were standing and the line it took over your shoulder?”“I think so,” I replied slowly and thoughtfully. “It seems to me it should have fallen somewhere about that clump of barberry. Over there.” I pointed with my finger toward the shrubbery that edges the apple orchard. “I suppose you are trying to find what it was.”“If no one else has found—or retrieved it yet,” agreed O’Leary.With O’Leary going ahead and holding back the more importunate branches and shrubs, we made our slow way to the spot I had indicated. I remember that we took some pains not to be seen from the hospital and, bending over as I did, to keep my white cap invisible from those windows, I had an absurd feeling that I was playing a grim game of hide-and-seek. In the excitement of the search I did not notice my soaked shoes and my wet hair, and remember only how I groped along the sodden leaf mold, and around the slippery brown roots of the shrubs and trees. If we had known what to look for, it would have been an easier task, O’Leary informed me, after some twenty minutes’ vain delving in the wet underbrush. He was inclined to be a little pettish about it, implying that I might have noticed the thing more carefully. That remark was made the time he slipped on some wet leaves and flung his hands into a barberry bush to keep his balance. He looked amazingly human and ordinary, picking out the thorns. It was just a few moments after that that I heard him utter a sudden ejaculation of pain. He was on the opposite side of a large clump of barberry bush and I crawled cautiously around to discover what had happened.I found him squatting on his heels, with his thumb in his mouth and the other hand clasping a small object that, from his glance, seemed to have pleased him inordinately.“I’ve found it, Miss Keate,” he said, achieving triumphant utterance in spite of the thumb. “Look! Could it have been this?”It was a mercy I was so near the ground for my knees simply caved in under me. In his hand was a small hypodermic syringe. The nickel on it was rusted a little from the weather.This syringe whizzing over my shoulder was exactly what I had seen. It was heavy enough to acquire considerable velocity and, as I peered through the shrubbery and trees to the porch, I knew that it would have fallen about here. The trouble was that it looked very much like the south wing’s missing syringe. Of course, all hypodermics are much alike, but I knew a certain way that it could be identified, for Maida had taken a cue from me and marked all her tools with a small scratched “D.”“Let me see it,” I said.Without a word he handed the thing to me. On the top of the little flat button was a rudely scratched “D,” rusty but still distinct.“I see you recognize it,” said O’Leary, taking his thumb out of his mouth, and regarding it as thoughtfully as if he had not another object in the world. “It is Miss Day’s, is it not?”I nodded.“Everyone in the wing had access to it. The fact that it may have originally belonged to Maida doesn’t mean that she threw it out here.”“No—no, of course not,” he said contemplatively. “Well—we found it, Miss Keate. Though I could wish that I had not run into it so forcibly.”He regarded the scratch on his thumb. “You don’t suppose that rust harbored any tetanus germs?”“It has bled enough by this time to clean itself,” I said without much sympathy, feeling indeed that if hewouldfind things it served him right to get stuck!“You nurses!” he said, looked at me and laughed. “I wish you could see yourself, Miss Keate.”Conscious not only of my undignified posture but also of an increasing dampness penetrating my skirts, I rose. He followed me through the shrubbery toward the path.“This is as secluded a place in which to talk as we can find, Miss Keate,” he said. “Have you come upon any new developments that I’d like to hear about?”“How did you know I had?” I asked, not any too pleasantly.He smiled. “By the look in your eyes and your general aspect of—er—having swallowed the canary, so to speak.”“Well, as a matter of fact there is a thing or two.” As briefly as I could, I told him of the gold sequin and of the fact that Corole had last worn that gown the night of June seventh. I also told him that she was an adept at the use of a hypodermic needle. And then, somewhat reluctantly, and glancing rather nervously into the foggy shadows that were increasing under the dripping trees about us, I told him of the visitor to Room 18 of the previous night. He asked several questions, seeming to be extremely interested.“It goes without saying that the person, whoever it was, who entered Room 18 last night had some purpose. That there was—or is—something yet in Eighteen that he wanted.” He frowned. “I don’t see what I could have missed.”“There was the sequin,” I suggested.“Yes, there was the sequin. You said it was under the screen? Yes, I missed that. But somehow I don’t see Corole Letheny coming back for it.”“She has likely not missed it—there are hundreds of the things on that dress.”“Huldah was positive she hadn’t worn the dress since Thursday night? She might have left it there last night, you know.”I shook my head.“No. Huldah was sure. And it must have been then, for the side of the sequin that lay uppermost is all tarnished from the rain.”“That is true. Then the question is, Who was in Room 18 last night? And what did he want?” His gray eyes were like two clear lakes.“Miss Keate,” he said suddenly. “This radium: I’ve been hunting through encyclopedias about the stuff, but there is something I want to know. Could it be carried about in a pocket? Without burning, you know.”“Yes, if it were in the box made for it. Radium is used in a variety of tools, for many purposes. But in this case it was in a sort of boxlike container, quite small.”“And could be carried in a pocket or in one’s hand?” he insisted. “Or even hidden in one place or another?”“Goodness, yes!” I replied. “I’ve seen tools containing it carried about in doctors’ bags often enough.”He did not speak for a moment or two, studying me in the meantime with thoughtful eyes that did not in the least see me.“I should think that it would be hard to dispose of—though as to that——” He broke off abruptly. “Look here, Miss Keate, how is it that such a valuable thing is used with so little precaution against theft?”“In some hospitals radium is guarded,” I explained. “There is one very large hospital, to which patients come from all over the world, where guards are placed in the sick-room whenever radium is used. But it was not deemed necessary here at St. Ann’s. Nothing of the kind has ever happened before and our class of patients is, as a rule, of the most respectable. St. Ann’s, you know, has really the best standing——” I stopped in the middle of my rather snooty remark as I saw the half smile on his face.“Still it did happen,” he said softly.“Yes,” I retorted. “And it is your business to recover it.”His face sobered instantly.“Not an easy task, Miss Keate,” he said at once and most amiably. “And I’m grateful for the help you give me. In return I shall tell you, since you ask it, that there are a few possible premises that interest me. You might give me your opinion of them. For one thing—we have found that there were three possible means of death, in or about Room 18. There was a revolver, ether, and a hypodermic syringe and enough morphine missing from the drug room to more than accomplish—what we believe it did accomplish. Three weapons where only one was necessary! Dr. Letheny met his death by a fourth means. Three weapons! Does that not indicate that there was more than one person interested in your patient’s death?”“Three!” I gasped. “Three!” In consternation I went over the list of names of that dinner party of ill memory. “But there were only six of us at that dinner to whose personnel you limit your suspects.”“Seven,” corrected O’Leary. “There is Dr. Letheny, you know.”“But Mr. O’Leary, it sounds like a club.” I was very much in earnest but the man had the impudence to laugh.“Itdoessound like an association of some kind,” he said coolly. “The cuff link and the affair of the disappearing hypodermic needle point to Maida. The presence and continued presence of Jim Gainsay, plus that somewhat ambiguous wire, point to him. Possibility includes you and the two doctors. And as to Miss Letheny, we have several counts against her. So you see it does look rather like a conspiracy.”“Nonsense,” I said irritably. “I assure you that all six of us did not band together for the purpose of doing away with Dr. Letheny and his patient.”“Of course not,” agreed O’Leary soothingly. “Though you must admit, Miss Keate, that there are a good many clues—no, we’ll call them merely facts that intrigue the curious mind—that seem to include all of you.”“Coincidence,” I said with considerable decision.O’Leary’s eyebrows went up a little.“Have it as you will,” he agreed amicably.“You have forgotten the fact that Fred Hajek’s coat was wet that night when I finally aroused him. Why didn’t you inquire about that at the inquest?”“I had already done so,” said O’Leary. “He explained that the window in his room was open and that the coat was lying across a chair beside the window when the rain began. He did not waken immediately and it rained on his coat.”“H’m,” said I skeptically. “How about Dr. Balman? Are you going to take his word for it that he was in his own apartment during the time all this took place? What about that bruise on his face that he said he got running through the orchard? Mightn’t he have got it earlier in the night?” Though my heart reproved me as I spoke, for Dr. Balman, torn from his beloved studies, forced into a thousand responsibilities, worn and haggard and tired and troubled, was a pathetic figure.“Dr. Balman is too busy a man these days to bother much with questions,” said O’Leary simply. “However, since you have inquired, I have proved his statement. According to the elevator man at the apartment house in which Dr. Balman lives, Dr. Balman arrived from the Letheny’s at twelve-fifteen and did not leave until the same elevator man, who also attends the switchboard during the night, gave him a call from St. Ann’s. The elevator man obligingly listened in to the conversation, had the elevator at the door of Dr. Balman’s apartment immediately, and took the doctor down to the first floor at exactly three minutes after two.”“Now then,” he continued after a short silence, “about this hypodermic needle: I should like to have a little talk with Miss Day. And also I want to visit Room 18 again.”“There is a patient in Room 18.”“Already!”“Yes. I don’t think Dr. Balman, or Dr. Hajek either, wanted to permit the room to be used, but there was no other place for the patient.”O’Leary’s clear eyes considered me absently for a moment.“It isn’t likely, then, that there will be a repetition of last night’s affair,” he said finally. “But suppose you let me go over the room again, when I can do so without disturbing the patient.”A figure moving through the mist caught our eyes. It was Maida, her white cap gleaming above her blue and scarlet cape.“Good-afternoon, Miss Day,” said O’Leary, stepping into the path.I think Maida was a little startled, for her eyes darkened and she glanced hurriedly along the path toward the bridge.But: “Good-afternoon, Mr. O’Leary,” she answered composedly enough. “Oh, there you are, Sarah,” she went on as her eyes fell on me. “I was wondering where you had gone.” Her eyes travelled to my hair, and she exclaimed: “How wet your hair is! You’ll get neuralgia, won’t you?”I put a hand to my hair. It was wet and very draggled where the branches from the trees and shrubs under which I had crept had pulled it. I straightened my wilted cap and tucked up the more adventurously straying locks.“I’ve been looking for something.”“I think you must have been,” agreed Maida, a flicker of mirth in her blue gaze. “You must have looked for it under the barberry bushes.”As a matter of fact I had done just that. But before I could say anything O’Leary took up the conversation.“Did you lose your hypodermic needle, Miss Day?” he asked without prelude.Maida’s face sobered instantly and she glanced swiftly at him.“Why, yes, I did lose it,” she said immediately.“Is this the one you lost?” he asked, holding the syringe toward her in his outstretched palm and keeping his extraordinarily clear eyes on her face so keenly as almost to read her thoughts.So I am sure he saw her lips tighten, as I did, and her chin go up defiantly.“It seems to be,” she said. “I had scratched my initial on mine.” She reached for the syringe and turned it so she could see the small plunger with its marked top.“Yes,” she said quietly. “That is my own syringe.”“I found it just now in a clump of bushes. Do you know how it got there?”“No,” said Maida flatly.“Why, then,” said O’Leary very softly, “did you replace it with Miss Keate’s needle?”Maida turned toward me at that, her eyes again unfathomable. But before she could reply Jim Gainsay, whose approach we had not noted, swept impetuously between us.“Hello, Miss Keate—O’Leary. Here you are, Miss Day.” And without any ado about it, he simply took Maida’s arm and hustled her away from us and along the narrow path toward the bridge before we had time to blink.It was rather astonishing, and O’Leary and I stood there in silence for a moment until the fog hid the gleam of scarlet from Maida’s cape.“Well,” remarked O’Leary then, turning to me; I saw that his eyes were twinkling with a sort of unwilling admiration that was half amusement. “Well—somewhat piratical is Mr. Gainsay. I suppose he brazenly listened to what we said. It is evident that he did not want Miss Day to answer my last question—also, that he is more or less in her confidence and that he was meeting her by appointment. Or”—he paused for a moment—“or it might be that he has reasons of his own for not wishing it to be known just why Miss Day substituted your needle for her own. At least,” he concluded briskly, “he knows more than an innocent man should know.”And with that I had to be content, for he would not say another word and we walked silently along the dusky path until we came to the colonial porch of the south wing.“I’ll go on around to the main entrance,” said O’Leary, then. “I want to use the telephone in the general office. I’ll be around to your wing later; there is something about Room 18 that I must know.” He took off his cap as he walked away from me—a nice gesture that was somewhat marred in effect by his very dirty hands.
I left rather abruptly. But on the darkening path toward St. Ann’s I decided that Corole could not have heard our conversation. Feeling that I must get these last two pieces of news, as well as the occurrence of the previous night to O’Leary as soon as possible, I walked rapidly along through the fog. I crossed the little bridge and was hurrying through the apple orchard when I came face to face with O’Leary.
“You are the very person I want to see, Miss Keate,” he said at once.
Taking my arm he drew me a few steps from the path; he motioned and following his gesture I found I had a view of the south door and small colonial porch.
“Tell me, Miss Keate, exactly where you were standing the night of June seventh when the—er—arrow-like affair was thrown over your shoulder?”
“I had truly forgotten that—I should have told you.”
“That’s all right,” he brushed my apology aside. “Can you recall about where you were standing and the line it took over your shoulder?”
“I think so,” I replied slowly and thoughtfully. “It seems to me it should have fallen somewhere about that clump of barberry. Over there.” I pointed with my finger toward the shrubbery that edges the apple orchard. “I suppose you are trying to find what it was.”
“If no one else has found—or retrieved it yet,” agreed O’Leary.
With O’Leary going ahead and holding back the more importunate branches and shrubs, we made our slow way to the spot I had indicated. I remember that we took some pains not to be seen from the hospital and, bending over as I did, to keep my white cap invisible from those windows, I had an absurd feeling that I was playing a grim game of hide-and-seek. In the excitement of the search I did not notice my soaked shoes and my wet hair, and remember only how I groped along the sodden leaf mold, and around the slippery brown roots of the shrubs and trees. If we had known what to look for, it would have been an easier task, O’Leary informed me, after some twenty minutes’ vain delving in the wet underbrush. He was inclined to be a little pettish about it, implying that I might have noticed the thing more carefully. That remark was made the time he slipped on some wet leaves and flung his hands into a barberry bush to keep his balance. He looked amazingly human and ordinary, picking out the thorns. It was just a few moments after that that I heard him utter a sudden ejaculation of pain. He was on the opposite side of a large clump of barberry bush and I crawled cautiously around to discover what had happened.
I found him squatting on his heels, with his thumb in his mouth and the other hand clasping a small object that, from his glance, seemed to have pleased him inordinately.
“I’ve found it, Miss Keate,” he said, achieving triumphant utterance in spite of the thumb. “Look! Could it have been this?”
It was a mercy I was so near the ground for my knees simply caved in under me. In his hand was a small hypodermic syringe. The nickel on it was rusted a little from the weather.
This syringe whizzing over my shoulder was exactly what I had seen. It was heavy enough to acquire considerable velocity and, as I peered through the shrubbery and trees to the porch, I knew that it would have fallen about here. The trouble was that it looked very much like the south wing’s missing syringe. Of course, all hypodermics are much alike, but I knew a certain way that it could be identified, for Maida had taken a cue from me and marked all her tools with a small scratched “D.”
“Let me see it,” I said.
Without a word he handed the thing to me. On the top of the little flat button was a rudely scratched “D,” rusty but still distinct.
“I see you recognize it,” said O’Leary, taking his thumb out of his mouth, and regarding it as thoughtfully as if he had not another object in the world. “It is Miss Day’s, is it not?”
I nodded.
“Everyone in the wing had access to it. The fact that it may have originally belonged to Maida doesn’t mean that she threw it out here.”
“No—no, of course not,” he said contemplatively. “Well—we found it, Miss Keate. Though I could wish that I had not run into it so forcibly.”
He regarded the scratch on his thumb. “You don’t suppose that rust harbored any tetanus germs?”
“It has bled enough by this time to clean itself,” I said without much sympathy, feeling indeed that if hewouldfind things it served him right to get stuck!
“You nurses!” he said, looked at me and laughed. “I wish you could see yourself, Miss Keate.”
Conscious not only of my undignified posture but also of an increasing dampness penetrating my skirts, I rose. He followed me through the shrubbery toward the path.
“This is as secluded a place in which to talk as we can find, Miss Keate,” he said. “Have you come upon any new developments that I’d like to hear about?”
“How did you know I had?” I asked, not any too pleasantly.
He smiled. “By the look in your eyes and your general aspect of—er—having swallowed the canary, so to speak.”
“Well, as a matter of fact there is a thing or two.” As briefly as I could, I told him of the gold sequin and of the fact that Corole had last worn that gown the night of June seventh. I also told him that she was an adept at the use of a hypodermic needle. And then, somewhat reluctantly, and glancing rather nervously into the foggy shadows that were increasing under the dripping trees about us, I told him of the visitor to Room 18 of the previous night. He asked several questions, seeming to be extremely interested.
“It goes without saying that the person, whoever it was, who entered Room 18 last night had some purpose. That there was—or is—something yet in Eighteen that he wanted.” He frowned. “I don’t see what I could have missed.”
“There was the sequin,” I suggested.
“Yes, there was the sequin. You said it was under the screen? Yes, I missed that. But somehow I don’t see Corole Letheny coming back for it.”
“She has likely not missed it—there are hundreds of the things on that dress.”
“Huldah was positive she hadn’t worn the dress since Thursday night? She might have left it there last night, you know.”
I shook my head.
“No. Huldah was sure. And it must have been then, for the side of the sequin that lay uppermost is all tarnished from the rain.”
“That is true. Then the question is, Who was in Room 18 last night? And what did he want?” His gray eyes were like two clear lakes.
“Miss Keate,” he said suddenly. “This radium: I’ve been hunting through encyclopedias about the stuff, but there is something I want to know. Could it be carried about in a pocket? Without burning, you know.”
“Yes, if it were in the box made for it. Radium is used in a variety of tools, for many purposes. But in this case it was in a sort of boxlike container, quite small.”
“And could be carried in a pocket or in one’s hand?” he insisted. “Or even hidden in one place or another?”
“Goodness, yes!” I replied. “I’ve seen tools containing it carried about in doctors’ bags often enough.”
He did not speak for a moment or two, studying me in the meantime with thoughtful eyes that did not in the least see me.
“I should think that it would be hard to dispose of—though as to that——” He broke off abruptly. “Look here, Miss Keate, how is it that such a valuable thing is used with so little precaution against theft?”
“In some hospitals radium is guarded,” I explained. “There is one very large hospital, to which patients come from all over the world, where guards are placed in the sick-room whenever radium is used. But it was not deemed necessary here at St. Ann’s. Nothing of the kind has ever happened before and our class of patients is, as a rule, of the most respectable. St. Ann’s, you know, has really the best standing——” I stopped in the middle of my rather snooty remark as I saw the half smile on his face.
“Still it did happen,” he said softly.
“Yes,” I retorted. “And it is your business to recover it.”
His face sobered instantly.
“Not an easy task, Miss Keate,” he said at once and most amiably. “And I’m grateful for the help you give me. In return I shall tell you, since you ask it, that there are a few possible premises that interest me. You might give me your opinion of them. For one thing—we have found that there were three possible means of death, in or about Room 18. There was a revolver, ether, and a hypodermic syringe and enough morphine missing from the drug room to more than accomplish—what we believe it did accomplish. Three weapons where only one was necessary! Dr. Letheny met his death by a fourth means. Three weapons! Does that not indicate that there was more than one person interested in your patient’s death?”
“Three!” I gasped. “Three!” In consternation I went over the list of names of that dinner party of ill memory. “But there were only six of us at that dinner to whose personnel you limit your suspects.”
“Seven,” corrected O’Leary. “There is Dr. Letheny, you know.”
“But Mr. O’Leary, it sounds like a club.” I was very much in earnest but the man had the impudence to laugh.
“Itdoessound like an association of some kind,” he said coolly. “The cuff link and the affair of the disappearing hypodermic needle point to Maida. The presence and continued presence of Jim Gainsay, plus that somewhat ambiguous wire, point to him. Possibility includes you and the two doctors. And as to Miss Letheny, we have several counts against her. So you see it does look rather like a conspiracy.”
“Nonsense,” I said irritably. “I assure you that all six of us did not band together for the purpose of doing away with Dr. Letheny and his patient.”
“Of course not,” agreed O’Leary soothingly. “Though you must admit, Miss Keate, that there are a good many clues—no, we’ll call them merely facts that intrigue the curious mind—that seem to include all of you.”
“Coincidence,” I said with considerable decision.
O’Leary’s eyebrows went up a little.
“Have it as you will,” he agreed amicably.
“You have forgotten the fact that Fred Hajek’s coat was wet that night when I finally aroused him. Why didn’t you inquire about that at the inquest?”
“I had already done so,” said O’Leary. “He explained that the window in his room was open and that the coat was lying across a chair beside the window when the rain began. He did not waken immediately and it rained on his coat.”
“H’m,” said I skeptically. “How about Dr. Balman? Are you going to take his word for it that he was in his own apartment during the time all this took place? What about that bruise on his face that he said he got running through the orchard? Mightn’t he have got it earlier in the night?” Though my heart reproved me as I spoke, for Dr. Balman, torn from his beloved studies, forced into a thousand responsibilities, worn and haggard and tired and troubled, was a pathetic figure.
“Dr. Balman is too busy a man these days to bother much with questions,” said O’Leary simply. “However, since you have inquired, I have proved his statement. According to the elevator man at the apartment house in which Dr. Balman lives, Dr. Balman arrived from the Letheny’s at twelve-fifteen and did not leave until the same elevator man, who also attends the switchboard during the night, gave him a call from St. Ann’s. The elevator man obligingly listened in to the conversation, had the elevator at the door of Dr. Balman’s apartment immediately, and took the doctor down to the first floor at exactly three minutes after two.”
“Now then,” he continued after a short silence, “about this hypodermic needle: I should like to have a little talk with Miss Day. And also I want to visit Room 18 again.”
“There is a patient in Room 18.”
“Already!”
“Yes. I don’t think Dr. Balman, or Dr. Hajek either, wanted to permit the room to be used, but there was no other place for the patient.”
O’Leary’s clear eyes considered me absently for a moment.
“It isn’t likely, then, that there will be a repetition of last night’s affair,” he said finally. “But suppose you let me go over the room again, when I can do so without disturbing the patient.”
A figure moving through the mist caught our eyes. It was Maida, her white cap gleaming above her blue and scarlet cape.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Day,” said O’Leary, stepping into the path.
I think Maida was a little startled, for her eyes darkened and she glanced hurriedly along the path toward the bridge.
But: “Good-afternoon, Mr. O’Leary,” she answered composedly enough. “Oh, there you are, Sarah,” she went on as her eyes fell on me. “I was wondering where you had gone.” Her eyes travelled to my hair, and she exclaimed: “How wet your hair is! You’ll get neuralgia, won’t you?”
I put a hand to my hair. It was wet and very draggled where the branches from the trees and shrubs under which I had crept had pulled it. I straightened my wilted cap and tucked up the more adventurously straying locks.
“I’ve been looking for something.”
“I think you must have been,” agreed Maida, a flicker of mirth in her blue gaze. “You must have looked for it under the barberry bushes.”
As a matter of fact I had done just that. But before I could say anything O’Leary took up the conversation.
“Did you lose your hypodermic needle, Miss Day?” he asked without prelude.
Maida’s face sobered instantly and she glanced swiftly at him.
“Why, yes, I did lose it,” she said immediately.
“Is this the one you lost?” he asked, holding the syringe toward her in his outstretched palm and keeping his extraordinarily clear eyes on her face so keenly as almost to read her thoughts.
So I am sure he saw her lips tighten, as I did, and her chin go up defiantly.
“It seems to be,” she said. “I had scratched my initial on mine.” She reached for the syringe and turned it so she could see the small plunger with its marked top.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That is my own syringe.”
“I found it just now in a clump of bushes. Do you know how it got there?”
“No,” said Maida flatly.
“Why, then,” said O’Leary very softly, “did you replace it with Miss Keate’s needle?”
Maida turned toward me at that, her eyes again unfathomable. But before she could reply Jim Gainsay, whose approach we had not noted, swept impetuously between us.
“Hello, Miss Keate—O’Leary. Here you are, Miss Day.” And without any ado about it, he simply took Maida’s arm and hustled her away from us and along the narrow path toward the bridge before we had time to blink.
It was rather astonishing, and O’Leary and I stood there in silence for a moment until the fog hid the gleam of scarlet from Maida’s cape.
“Well,” remarked O’Leary then, turning to me; I saw that his eyes were twinkling with a sort of unwilling admiration that was half amusement. “Well—somewhat piratical is Mr. Gainsay. I suppose he brazenly listened to what we said. It is evident that he did not want Miss Day to answer my last question—also, that he is more or less in her confidence and that he was meeting her by appointment. Or”—he paused for a moment—“or it might be that he has reasons of his own for not wishing it to be known just why Miss Day substituted your needle for her own. At least,” he concluded briskly, “he knows more than an innocent man should know.”
And with that I had to be content, for he would not say another word and we walked silently along the dusky path until we came to the colonial porch of the south wing.
“I’ll go on around to the main entrance,” said O’Leary, then. “I want to use the telephone in the general office. I’ll be around to your wing later; there is something about Room 18 that I must know.” He took off his cap as he walked away from me—a nice gesture that was somewhat marred in effect by his very dirty hands.