CAUGHT IN THE WEB
A LONG-DRAWN sigh cut the stillness. Slowly Miriam Ward raised her
head and struggled to a more upright position. Her limbs felt stiff
and cramped and she moved with difficulty. Without comprehension she
watched a beam of light creep from underneath a window curtain and
extend across the floor, its radiance widening as the sun rose higher
in the heavens. The current of air from the opened window blowing
indirectly upon her overcame her sense of suffocation, but her wild
stare about the bedroom did not bring recollection in its train. The
first thing to fix her attention was the fireplace and the darkened
hearth--no heat was given out by the dead embers. Suddenly conscious of
the chill atmosphere, she involuntarily grasped her dress and dragged
it closer about her neck. The touch of the starched linen caused her to
glance downward. She was wearing her uniform, therefore she was on duty!
Miriam Ward's dulled wits slowly adjusted themselves. She had reported
for duty at the Registry; a call had come--from where? To attend whom?
Roberts? No, that was the name of the physician. Ah, she had it--Paul
Abbott. The chord of memory was touched at last and the events of the
night crowded upon her. The man in the bed--
Stiffly Miriam scrambled to her feet and made a few halting steps to
the bedside. It took all her will-power to pull aside the bed curtains
and glance down. Paul Abbott lay partly turned upon his side, his fine
profile outlined against the white pillowcase, and his right hand just
showing outside the eiderdown quilt.
Miriam's hand tightened its grasp on the curtain and she leaned weakly
against the side of the bed; but for its support her trembling knees
would have given way under her. She had been the victim of a nightmare!
The midnight visit of Betty Carter and the clergyman, the substitution
of a stranger for her patient--all had been a hallucination conjured up
by a too vivid imagination. She had slept on duty. That, in itself, was
an unpardonable offense.
Raising her arm she glanced at her wrist watch--the hands registered
a quarter past eight. Then nearly nine hours had passed and she had
lain asleep. A wave of color suffused her white face and she grew hot
and cold by turns. Her heart was beating with suffocating rapidity as
she hurried to the windows and drew aside the long, heavy curtains and
pulled up the Holland shades. The storm of the night before was over
and the winter sunshine brought a touch of warmth to the room and a
sense of comfort.
A glance at the fireplace convinced Miriam that it would require both
time and fresh kindling wood to start a fire. It could wait until she
had summoned the caretaker; the room was not so cold now that she had
closed the window.
Retracing her footsteps she again paused by the bed and gazed at her
patient. He still lay on his side, motionless. Miriam Ward caught her
breath--motionless, aye, too motionless. A certain rigidity, a waxen
pallor, indistinguishable in her first glimpse of him in the darkened
room, held her eyes, trained to detect the slightest alteration in a
patient's condition. Her hand sought his wrist, then his heart, then
dropped limply to her side. Paul Abbott lay dead before her.
Her low cry was smothered in the bed curtain, which she pressed
against her mouth, and for a moment she swayed dizzily upon her feet.
Paul Abbott had died while she lay asleep within a few feet of his
bed. Overwhelming remorse deadened every other feeling and held her
spellbound. Fully five minutes elapsed before a sense of duty aroused
her to action.
Wheeling around, Miriam staggered rather than walked to the telephone
standing on Abbott's desk. She had jotted down Doctor Roberts' 'phone
call the night before, but it took her several seconds to get the
central at Washington, and still others passed before a man's voice
told her that the physician was out making his morning rounds. At her
urgent request the servant promised to locate Doctor Roberts and send
him at once to Abbott's Lodge.
As Miriam replaced the receiver on its hook she was conscious of a
feeling of deadly nausea and she stumbled as she walked across the
room and into the hall. She must have aid. Her repeated calls brought
no response. What had become of the caretaker and his wife? A noise of
some one moving in the hall below caused her to run down the staircase
to the lower landing.
"Here--here, this way!" she gasped, and saw vaguely outlined a woman's
terrified face in front of her while the sound of a heavy tread coming
down the staircase echoed in her ears. "Mr. Abbott--I--" Voice and
strength failed her simultaneously, and before any one could reach her
she lay in a crumpled heap on the landing, unconscious of the loud
ringing of the gong over the front door.
It was approaching noon when a timid knock at her bedroom door brought
Miriam Ward into the corridor and face to face with the caretaker's
wife.
"If you please, Miss, the doctor says do you feel better?" The question
came in a gasp, characteristic of Martha Corbin. A gray ghost of
a woman, timid to the verge of cowardice, she seldom spoke unless
addressed.
"Much better," replied the trained nurse. "Where is Doctor Roberts?"
"In there," with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder. "He wants to
see ye."
"Very well." Miriam Ward closed her bedroom door with a firm hand. She
had regained some hold upon her composure as her attacks of nausea
ceased and the throbbing in her head lessened. Doctor Roberts had left
her two hours before with the admonition to remain in bed until he saw
her again, but her anxiety of mind had prevented her following his
directions. She paused involuntarily outside of Paul Abbott's bedroom,
then, gathering courage, she stepped inside. Doctor Roberts turned at
the sound of her approach and put down the telephone instrument.
"So you are up," he said gruffly. "Well, how are you? Feeling stronger?"
"Yes; thank you, Doctor." In spite of her determined effort to keep
her voice expressionless, Miriam was conscious that it was not quite
steady. "I--oh, Doctor, I don't know what to say." Her pent-up emotion
was gaining the upper hand. "How to tell you--"
"What?" as she paused.
"That--that--I slept on duty."
Doctor Roberts eyed her steadily for what seemed an interminable
minute. "So that was it," he remarked dryly. "Well, what then?"
The nurse's pallor was intensified, but her eyes did not falter in
their direct gaze.
"I was asleep when Mr. Abbott died," she admitted, her hands clenching
themselves in the pockets of her uniform.
Doctor Roberts' stare grew prolonged. "And this was your first case in
Washington?" he asked, with marked emphasis.
"Yes." Miriam Ward moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
"Hardly a successful début," commented Roberts. His glance strayed
beyond the nurse to a man standing in the shadow of a window curtain.
"Give Miss Ward a chair, Alan."
Somewhat startled by the presence of a third person, Miriam accepted
the proffered seat with relief; she was weaker than she had at first
realized.
"Miss Ward," continued Doctor Roberts, "this is Mr. Alan Mason, of the
Washington _Post_. He arrived here in time to carry you to your bedroom
and then summoned me."
Miriam glanced upward and encountered the gaze of a pair of deep blue
eyes fixed upon her in concern.
"You should not have gotten up," Alan declared, and the human sympathy
in his voice brought a lump in her throat. She saw his clear-cut
features, wavy dark hair, and whimsical mouth through a mist which she
strove to wink away. "I'm afraid you have overdone things a bit."
Miriam shook her head. "I could not rest in my bedroom," she said.
"There must be something that I can do, Doctor Roberts; unless you
distrust me too much." Her voice shook with feeling, and she paused
abruptly, unable to go on.
The two men exchanged glances, then Roberts rose. "There, there!" he
exclaimed, a trifle awkwardly. "Just take things quietly, Miss Ward,
while Alan asks you a few questions. It is his business, you know."
"Just so." Alan Mason nodded reassuringly. "I'm a reporter and also a
cousin of Paul's; in fact, his nearest relative. How did Paul seem last
night--before you fell asleep?"
"He--" Her pause was infinitesimal. "He appeared much excited, even
irrational, but at times his mind was perfectly clear. He took a little
nourishment." She stopped and passed one hand before her eyes. Her
dreams still haunted her. Could she truthfully say where imagination
had dovetailed with reality? Was Betty Carter's visit, her marriage to
Paul Abbott but a figment of her overcharged brain? Would her hearers
think her a lunatic as well as criminally negligent if she went into
details?
Doctor Roberts broke the pause. "I have looked over your chart," he
stated, "and find that the last entry was made soon after midnight. You
made no record of any marked change in his condition."
Miriam swallowed hard. "The collapse must have come suddenly," she
said. "At what time do you think he died?"
Roberts eyed her in silence for a minute. "Come over to the bed," he
directed, and not waiting for her, turned on his heel.
The long side curtains of the four-post bedstead were stretched across
it, and as Miriam laid her hand on one of them to draw it aside, Alan
Mason checked her.
"I found this wad of cotton under the bed," he began. "Had you any
occasion last night to use chloroform?"
"No." Miriam looked at him in startled wonder. "No."
"Then," Roberts scanned her closely, "how comes it that you, a trained
nurse, are unaware that you were chloroformed?"
Slowly Miriam took in the meaning of his words. "Chloroformed?" she
gasped. "_I?_"
It was Alan Mason who answered and not Doctor Roberts. "I detected the
odor of chloroform when I carried you to your bedroom," he said. "So
then I came in here--found my cousin, Paul, dead--and this cotton under
the bed."
Miriam stared at her companions in dumbfounded silence for a moment.
"My attack of nausea--" she faltered.
"Was the result of the chloroform," declared Doctor Roberts. His voice
deepened. "We also detected its odor about Paul Abbott."
"Good God!" Miriam drew back. "Was Mr. Abbott anesthetized?"
Roberts' gaze never left her face in the lengthened pause.
"In Heaven's name, why don't you answer?" Miriam looked piteously from
one man to the other. "Was Mr. Abbott chloroformed?"
"No," replied Roberts. "He was stabbed in the back."
Dragging aside the curtains, Miriam gazed in horror at the bed. The
bedclothes had been pulled back and Paul Abbott lay upon his face.
Under his left shoulder blade was a dark and sinister bloodstain.