OVERHEARD IN THE DORMITORY
Aggie’s hay fever was bad that morning, and she stayed in bed. Tish
and I went in and sat with her after breakfast, and she was very
disagreeable.
“I shall certaidly tell Tobby whad I thig of hib,” she grumbled. “I
told hib I could dot hold that therbobeter. _That_ is what gave be that
dreab. If it _was_ a dreab!”
“Certainly it was a dream,” said Tish.
“I’b dot so sure!” Aggie retorted.
Well, relieved of the hay fever, Aggie’s story was something like this:
She had been asleep, and was dreaming she had turned into a thermometer
herself, and as she got hotter, having too many blankets on, she said
she felt herself expanding until her head touched something that she
thought was the head of the bed. But she said in her dream she kept on
expanding, and she was just saying to Tommy Andrews, in a fury, that
if it grew any hotter she’d burst, when something gave way at the head
of the bed with a sort of tearing sound, and she wakened. She said it
was a full minute before she was certain she _wasn’t_ a thermometer and
hadn’t expanded right up through the top. Then she reached up to turn
over her pillow, and just beside her was a dead foot. She had thought
she was still dreaming and had actually caught hold of it. But it
disappeared under her fingers, dissolved, as you might say, and there
was no body. Aggie was positive about that. It was then she sat up and
screamed.
Well, we kept the knowledge of what had happened to Tommy from her, and
left her sitting up in bed using a nasal spray. Tish was wonderfully
better after breakfast, and we walked up and down the corridor, she
without the cane and hardly a limp.
It was Tish who suggested that we go into the nurses’ dormitory and ask
how Miss Blake was, and after we had located Miss Lewis, gossiping with
the day nurse in a corner, we slipped in. Patients are forbidden in the
dormitory.
The door to Miss Blake’s room was closed, but somebody was inside,
talking. Tish and I waited outside, and we could hardly help hearing
what was said. It was a woman’s voice, familiar enough, but I couldn’t
place it.
“You must stay in bed, Ruth,” she was pleading. “Oh, my dear, how can I
forgive myself!”
“Let me up!” Ruth Blake’s voice, insistent and querulous. “They are
hanging him up by the neck--” her voice died away in a groan.
The other woman broke into frightened sobbing, and Tish put her hand on
the knob. But I held her back.
“I have killed her!” said the voice. “Always thinking of myself! Ruth!
Listen to me!”
“Through the skylight!” babbled Ruth. “I tell you, he is dead!”
“Ruth!” begged the voice, and more sobbing, growing gradually quieter.
Then silence, as if the sick girl had dropped asleep.
Tish and I slipped away, and back through the connecting door to our
room. Once there, by common mute consent we left the door into the
corridor open and took up such positions as enabled us to watch the
people who passed along the hall. Ten minutes brought nobody. Then we
heard the door open, and brisk steps coming along the hall.
“Well,” said Miss Linda Smith, in her cheerful way, “well, how’s the
knee this morning, Miss Carberry?”
“Better,” Tish replied genially.
“That’s fine,” said Miss Smith and hurried along, humming a bit of a
song. Tish and I looked at each other. In spite of the cheerfulness,
of the eyes bathed in cold water and carefully powdered, it was Miss
Smith’s voice we had heard in the Blake girl’s room.
But when we got to talking it over we couldn’t see that what we had
heard had really any importance. Miss Smith had left the girl alone
in the mortuary, and was reproaching herself for having done it. That
was all. But as Tish said, what did she mean by saying she was always
thinking of herself? It was hardly, as Tish pointed out, an act of
supreme selfishness to go down and get an armful of sheets to cover a
corpse!
Tommy came in at eleven o’clock, freshly shaved and linened, and
apparently as well as ever. He had been over to see Miss Blake first,
but found her sleeping, which he considered a good sign. I noticed that
he kept his right hand in his pocket, and did not use the arm at all.
He said the shoulder was stiff, naturally, and that he must have been
sleep-walking himself to get over that fence and through the skylight
the way he had.
“Sleep-walking!” said Tish sharply. “Do you think that that girl was
sleep-walking?”
“I certainly do,” said Tommy.
“Then you’re a fool,” said Tish. “If she _was_ sleep-walking, so was
the burglar who took my disciple spoons last fall. Sleep-walking!”
“I wish you--”
“You’re wishing me bad luck if you feel the way you look!” said Tish
shrewdly. “Now, Tommy, I’m going to get to the bottom of all this,
and so are you. It will take twice the amount of effort separated as
united. Don’t try any evasions with me--half a truth is worse than
a good lie. Now--out with it. What really happened on the roof last
night?”
“I wish I knew!” said Tommy, and looked at us gravely. “You saw what
there was to see up-stairs. I happened to see Miss Blake going up
the stairs with the candle, and I noticed something strange in her
expression. I followed her and you followed me. She went into each
room and then to the mortuary. That’s proof, isn’t it, that she was
sleep-walking? I’ve worried over it all night, and I’m sure of it.
Anyhow, why would she take a candle, when there is electric light
everywhere? I tell you, the shock of the night before was on the girl’s
mind while she slept.”
Tish had got out her sheet of letter paper.
“Well?” she said, putting something down.
“I saw her go into the mortuary, and I heard her talking; I couldn’t
make out what she said. Then there was a crash, and I ran. When I got
there one of the stained-glass windows was wide open, and she was
climbing up the fire-escape outside. The candle had gone out. Aunt
Tish, that fire-escape up there is the merest skeleton, and it is five
high stories from the ground. Awake, she couldn’t have done it.”
“Humph!” said Tish. “It isn’t hard at night, when you can’t see how far
it is to the ground.” Then, seeing that Tommy was looking sulky, she
added: “Still, you may be right.”
“Up to that point,” said Tommy, “I’m perfectly clear. I was out on the
escape by the time she got to the roof, and I lost her there. I saw her
again, however, when I climbed on the roof, and went toward her. I’ve
heard a lot about the danger of waking sleep-walkers suddenly, and I
spoke to her quietly. I said ‘Miss Blake.’”
“Yes?”
“Well,” he confessed, “that’s about all I remember. Or no, it isn’t.
The girl was asleep, and not responsible. She turned like a flash when
I spoke, and cried out, and--I think she threw her brass candlestick
at me! Then--I seemed to be falling forward--and when I knew anything
again I was in the hall below.”
“Having fainted over a four-foot fence!” Tish observed sharply. “Tommy,
that won’t do.”
“I give you my word, Aunt Tish,” he said, “I haven’t any idea _how_ I
got over that fence and through that skylight.”
“I have!” Tish said, and put away her note-paper. We both stared at her
and Tommy even smiled.
“Exactly,” he said. “I’ve thought of that, but how do you account for
the fact that not a patient left his ward or private room last night?
That every servant and nurse was in his proper place? Jacobs and I took
pains to find that out. And that I’ve got as pretty a bite in my right
shoulder as you would care to see?”
“Bite!” Tish exclaimed, and reached feebly for the note-paper.
“Bite!” I repeated. “Then it must be an animal--!”
“Who knows?” Tommy said quietly. “Jacobs and I got it cauterized.
I don’t want the internes to get hold of the story--they’re apt to
talk to the nurses. I hardly know what to do next. Since Mr. Harrison
had the trouble last night with the two medical men, he is too busy
holding down his job to have much time for anything else. If there is
to be anything done, I rather think it’s up to me.”
“It’s up to _us_!” said Tish firmly.