ORDERLY BRIGGS AND DISORDERLY BATES
After all, it was my suggestion that we bring in Briggs, the orderly,
and ask him about the night Johnson’s body was moved. Tish acknowledges
this, and if she does not realize how much poor Briggs helped us in
unraveling the mystery, I am not one to remind her. But Briggs was on
night duty, and went to bed after carrying the breakfast trays on our
floor.
Tish, however, having approved of my idea, had appropriated it as her
own--which is a way most self-willed people have, and she insisted that
Tommy send for him.
He came about twelve o’clock, looking rather surly, and presenting a
general appearance of having his coat and trousers on over his night
shirt.
“Come in, Briggs,” said Tommy, when he knocked. “Sorry to wake you, old
man.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he replied sourly. “The noise in the place is
enough to waken the dead.”
“Perhaps,” said Tish, “perhaps that’s what ailed Johnson!”
Briggs turned quickly and looked at her. He was a tall man, with
a heavy black mustache and powerful stooped shoulders. He had one
drooping eyelid, that gave him an unpleasant appearance. Whether it was
consciousness of this, or shiftiness, which was Tish’s theory, he never
looked directly at one. As Tish said, his gaze seemed to stop at your
collar, but if you averted your eyes you were sure to have the feeling
that he’d darted a stealthy glance at you and got away with it before
you could catch him.
“No,” he said, after a moment, “nothing will waken Johnson but the
trumpet on the last day.”
“Do you know, Briggs,” Tish said coolly, “I have my own little theory
about that night? You don’t like Miss Smith, and you and Marshall
prepared a little surprise for her. Shame on you, Briggs.”
He positively looked straight at her. It was so surprising that it
presented him in a new light with a sort of aureole of outraged virtue.
“No, _mam_,” he said. “You’re right, I don’t get along with Miss Smith,
but as for playing a trick of that sort--!” He took his handkerchief
out and wiped his forehead. “I wouldn’t have done it on anybody,” he
said, “and as for Johnson--” he glanced at Tommy, half ashamed--“I tell
you, the things I’ve seen about that man’s bed would make me respect
him, dead or living. Raps on the foot-board, and his bedside stand with
two legs in the air, beating time like a drum. No, _mam_, if you think
I did that, you think I’m a braver man than I am.”
“Humph!” said Tish, and put down “Raps and bedside stand. Johnson.”
“Suppose,” Tommy suggested, “now that you are here, you tell us exactly
what happened the night Johnson died.”
“He died at ten minutes after twelve on Tuesday night, sir. I was
staying by a delirious patient in the next ward, Doctor. Miss Durand,
the night nurse, was busy and asked me to watch him. It wasn’t until an
hour after he died that I was notified to take Johnson’s body to the
mortuary. I called Marshall from the floor below, and we took the body
up on the elevator. Jacobs runs the elevator after midnight, it being
not used except for emergency, night operations, ambulance cases coming
in, or a death.
“We put the body on the receiving table, and Marshall uncovered the
face. Maybe we were both nervous, having talked many a time during his
sickness with the old man, and him saying he’d come back and bring us
some sign from the spirit world, after he’d ‘passed over.’ Anyhow,
Marshall uncovered his face and looked at him, and he said, ‘Johnson,
now’s your time to make good. Here _you_ are and here _we_ are. Come
over with the sign!’”
Briggs looked at Tommy and Tommy nodded.
“Sign,” wrote Tish. “Then what happened, Briggs?” Neither of us would
have been a bit surprised if he had said the dead man moved a foot, or
that unseen hands pulled the pipe-molding loose and bent it down before
their very eyes. But Briggs shook his head.
“Nothing--then,” he said, “but when I heard about what happened later,
I had a talk with Marshall. I don’t believe in fooling with things you
don’t know anything about.”
“Briggs,” Tommy said suddenly, “you say the body lay in the ward almost
an hour before removal. Why was that?”
“Because,” Briggs replied significantly, “there was no nurse in that
ward when he died, or for nearly an hour after. The ward was in charge
of a convalescent typhoid named Bates.”
“Why was that?” Tommy demanded. But Briggs only shrugged his shoulders,
with his good eye fixed about four inches below Tommy’s chin.
When he got no answer, “Bring Bates here,” Tommy said sharply, and
during the interval until the two men appeared he walked somberly up
and down, his face thoughtful.
Bates was hardly prepossessing. He shuffled in in a pair of
carpet-slippers much too large, a pair of faded trousers, and a garment
that was evidently his nightshirt with the tail tucked in. But Bates
was shrewd if unshaven, as we found out.
“Bates,” said Tommy, “you are a patient in K ward?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You helped to look after Johnson, the man who died night before last?”
“Sometimes--when the nurses were busy.”
“Have you heard anything about--of what happened after his death?”
Bates smiled.
“There’s been a good bit of talk going around, sir,” he said. “He’d got
the ward worked up some--talking about coming back after he’d chipped
in. One of the men claims to have seen him looking in the window near
his bed last night, and there’s a story about his corpse being found
hanging--but that’s ridiculous, sir.”
“It’s true, Bates.”
Bates’ jaw dropped. “Oh, no, sir. Surely not!” he said, and changed
color.
“Now, Bates,” Tommy said, “we are men of sense, you and I. We know
Johnson didn’t do it himself, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir.” Not as convinced as he might have been.
“Then it was done for him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Presumably by somebody in this house.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bates, was any one missing from your ward during either last night or
the night before, that you know of?”
Bates thought. “No, sir,” he said. “I don’t sleep much; that’s my
trouble, insomnia. I can hear a kitten stir in my ward--not, of course,
that we’re liable to kittens, sir. Night before last I was up and
dressed all night, wandering around, and last night, as you know, I sat
up with that railroad case. The boy was out of his head.”
“Then, either night, no patient could have stolen out from K ward into
the house and been absent for any length of time without your knowing
it?”
“It’s hardly possible,” Bates said. “Mr. Briggs or I would know for
sure, sir.”
“Do you help in the other wards on the men’s floor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are there any delirious patients?”
“None able to stand or walk about.”
“I see,” Tommy said thoughtfully. “And now, Bates, is it correct that
Miss Durand, the night nurse, left her ward for fifty minutes, knowing
that Johnson was dying?”
“Fifty-five minutes, sir.” Bates’ shrewd eyes said more than his words.
“It was, possibly, for night supper?”
“That’s at two o’clock.” Bates knew a good bit about the hospital, and
enjoyed showing his knowledge.
“You have no idea _why_ she left?”
“No, sir. Miss Smith came to the door, and they went away together.
Miss Smith looked upset and nervous, as if she’d been crying--if you’ll
excuse my saying so, sir.”
“Did you notice in which direction they went?”
“They went down-stairs. When they came back Miss Smith was looking more
cheerful, and she had a bundle in her hand.”
“What sort of a bundle?”
“Darkish. It might have been clothing. Miss Durand was frightened when
she found Johnson had died, and she asked me not to say she had been
away.”
“Thanks, Bates. You’d better go back now,” said Tommy, “and Bates, if
you hear or see anything that strikes you as curious, let me know, will
you?”
Bates promised and flapped out, with Briggs behind him. Tommy called
Briggs back. “Briggs,” he said, “I have asked the superintendent to let
me put on a few guards to-night. This thing has gone beyond a joke. Mr.
Harrison will give us the scrubbers, Frank, from the elevator and two
assistants from the laundry. The internes have volunteered, also, that
makes eleven; with you and myself, thirteen.”
“Thirteen!” said Briggs. “Would you mind making it fourteen, Doctor?”
Tommy looked surprised.
“Briggs!” he said. “Surely you--” Then he took a good look at Briggs’
pasty face and nodded. “All right,” he said. “We can have Hicks from
the ambulance. And just a word,” he said, as Briggs made for the door.
“We are not talking, Briggs. Most of these men are watching for a
thief. Do you understand? And I’d be glad to have your help in placing
them where they’ll do the most good.”