The Patient in Room 18
by M. G. Eberhart
Published 1929 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
CONTENTS
1. An Unpleasant Dinner Party
2. In Room 18
3. Dr. Letheny Does Not Return
4. A Yellow Slicker and Other Problems
5. A Lapis Cuff Link
6. I Make a Discovery—and Regret It
7. The Disappearing Key and Part of an Inquest
8. A Gold Sequin
9. Under the Barberry Bush
10. A Midnight Visitor
11. By the Light of a Match
12. Room 18 Again
13. The Radium Appears
14. A Matter of Evidence
15. Corole Is Moved to Candour
16. The Red Light Above the Door
17. O’Leary Tells a Story
18. O’Leary Revises His Story
To William and Margaret Good
NOTE
All of the characters in this book,
as well as St. Ann’s Hospital,
are entirely fictitious.
CHAPTER 1
An Unpleasant Dinner Party
St. Ann’s is an old hospital, sprawling in a great heap of
weather-stained red brick and green ivy on the side of Thatcher Hill,
a little east and south of the city of B——. The building, though
remodelled and added on to here and there, still retains the great,
solid walls, the gumwood and walnut woodwork, the large, old-fashioned
rooms, and the general air of magnificence and dignity that
characterized what was known, in the grandiloquent nineties, as the
Thatcher mansion.
Time has made changes; quantities of windows, low and wide, modern
plumbing, electricity, a telephone to every floor, and added wings
whose brick walls have been carefully weather-stained to match the
original walls are some of them. On the west is the main entrance, an
imposing affair of massive doors and great travertine pillars and
curving driveway. But on the south, at the extreme end of the south
wing, is another and less imposing entrance, a small, semi-circular,
colonial porch and a glass-paned door that leads from the hushed
hospital corridor directly upon a narrow strip of grass and then
shrubbery and apple orchard and willows and thickets of firs. From
this door, too, is a path leading up and around the hill, and,
considerably below and beyond the thickets of trees and brush, winds a
road, dusty and seldom used.
The south wing is the most recently rebuilt wing of St. Ann’s, and
time was when Room 18 was the brightest and sunniest room of the whole
wing. I say, time was. Room 18 is now cleaned and dusted regularly
twice a week by two student nurses. Occasionally Miss Jones, the
office superintendent, tries to enter a patient in Room 18, but
patients from the city remember too well the newspaper headlines—such
as Room 18 Claims Its Third Victim—and refuse at the first hint of
that significant numeral. Patients from out of town present a no less
serious problem in that, even though they take the room assigned to
them without demur, they invariably demand removal to another room
after only a few hours’ residence in Room 18. Once we tried giving the
whole wing a new set of numbers but it made no difference. Room 18 was
Room 18 and the patients placed there, with one exception, have never
remained past midnight.
I do not know whether this situation is due to the patients
mysteriously getting wind of Room 18’s history, in spite of the nurses
being forbidden to speak of the unfortunate affair, or to the
undoubtedly sinister aspect the room has managed to acquire. This
latter has puzzled me more than a little. The room has the same
hygienic and utilitarian furniture it always had, the same southeast
corner location, the same outlook of close-encircling orchard and
dense green shrubbery, though, of course, the shades are drawn to a
decorous length, and the same rubberized floor covering. It is true
that the last item may somewhat induce the atmosphere of the repellent
that Eighteen’s very walls seem to exude, because it holds, despite
the efforts of various scrubwomen, a certain darkish stain there at
the foot of the narrow bed.
It is a fact that five minutes in that too-still room bring chills up
the small of my back, clammy moisture to the palms of my hands, and a
singular and pressing desire to escape. And I have a good stomach, no
nerves, and little imagination.
And in the long, dark hours of the second watch, between midnight and
early morning, I still avoid the closed, mysterious door of Room 18!
The night it began, Corole Letheny had a dinner party up at the
doctor’s cottage on the hillside, at the end of the path from the
south door. She telephoned hastily, late in the afternoon, for Maida
Day and me. She was giving the dinner, it appeared, for a young civil
engineer, a friend of Dr. Letheny’s, who had dropped in unexpectedly
on his way from a bridge in Uruguay to another bridge in Russia.
Ordinarily I do not care for Corole’s dinners, which are apt to
acquire an exotic tinge that is distasteful to me, but a travel tale
and an engineer allure me equally and since I did not go on duty that
night until midnight I promised to come. Maida was a little harder to
get, seeming, indeed, to be unusually reluctant, and her voice, as I
heard it, standing beside her at the telephone, was anything but
cordial.
“Never mind,” I said as she hung up the receiver and Corole’s warm,
husky tones ceased. “Never mind. It may be quite diverting. And this
is cold roast beef night here at St. Ann’s.”
Maida laughed.
“Corole’s dinners often are—diverting,” she said rather cruelly. “I
shouldn’t have gone but she really is in a mess. The man just arrived
this afternoon and he is leaving in the morning. Corole knew, too,
that we both had second watch this two weeks and that we could be away
from the hospital until twelve.”
“I think,” I said reflectively as we strolled from the office, whither
we had been called to the telephone, back along the narrow corridor
that leads to the south wing, “I think I shall wear my silver tissue.”
Maida nodded, giving me the straight look from her intensely blue eyes
that I had so grown to like in the three years that she had been a
graduate nurse at St. Ann’s.
“Do so, by all means,” she agreed. “And put your hair up high on your
head.”
Maida professes to a great admiration for my hair, and I daresay it is
well enough in its way; that is, if you like red hair and plenty of
it. I have never cut it; no woman of my years, especially one with a
high-bridged nose and inclined to embonpoint, freckles, and
ground-grippers, should cut her hair.
Later, gowned in the silver tissue, and with a dark silk coat over my
finery, for the June night had turned cloudy, I slipped into the south
wing for a last look to be sure that everything was going well. Having
been superintendent of the wing for more years than I care to mention,
I feel a natural sense of responsibility. Dinner I found to be well
over, seven o’clock temperatures taken, the typhoid convalescent in
Eleven a bit less feverish, and the new cast on Six a little more
comfortable.
Six caught at a fold of my dress admiringly.
“All dressed up?” he said. He was a nice boy, who had a tubercular hip
bone and had spent the last six months in a cast.
“Isn’t she fine?” said Maida from the doorway. I saw the boy’s eyes
widen before I turned toward her.
I had grown accustomed to Maida in her stern white uniform. Now her
black hair and the sword-blue of her eyes and the vivid pink that
flared into her cheeks and lips at the least touch of excitement—all
this, above a wispy, clinging dinner gown of midnight-blue that was
somehow barely frosted in crystal beads, affected me much as it did
the boy.
“Gee!” he breathed finally.
Maida laughed a little tremulously; the compliment in his eyes was
pathetically genuine.
“Don’t be silly, Sonny,” she said, but her blue eyes shone. “How is
the new cast?”
“Oh—all right,” said Sonny gamely.
“I’ll come in and tell you about the party when we get back,” promised
Maida (knowing that in the agony of a ten-hour-old cast he would still
be awake).
“Gee,” said Sonny again, “will you, Miss Day?”
“Yes,” said Maida with that grave sincerity that was one of her
charms. “Ready, Sarah?”
I followed Maida from the room and along the corridor south to the end
of the wing. Once through the door and across the small porch we
reached the path that wound through the orchard, over a small bridge,
and across a field of sweet-smelling alfalfa to the Letheny cottage.
The path is not wide enough for two abreast, so Maida preceded me and
I found myself studying her slim shoulders and gracefully alert
carriage. Maida always seemed to me to be poised on the crest of a
wave; as if she were continually victorious and yet not arrogant. She
is that rare thing, a born nurse. She can deal successfully with the
most difficult hypochondriacs and yet I have seen her in furious,
desperate tears over a case like Sonny’s. It is not my intention to
rhapsodize over Maida. I suppose I admired her because she was so
gloriously what I might have been in my younger days had things been a
little different. Though, of course, I am not and never was the beauty
that Maida was.
Well, we found Corole waiting for us and the other guests already
having cocktails. Dr. Letheny greeted me as meticulously as if we had
not operated together that very morning. He was a tall man, dark and
thin, with an extraordinarily precise manner, and was almost too
correct as to dress. He lingered a little over taking Maida’s wrap and
said something in a low voice that I did not understand, though Maida
replied briefly and turned away, her slim black eyebrows registering
annoyance.
Dr. Balman, Dr. Letheny’s assistant, was there; a lanky man of medium
height, with a thin, pale face, a high benevolent forehead, thoughtful
eyes that were usually detached and rather dreamy, and a thin pointed
beard that was awry now, as always, owing to a habit he had of
worrying it with his slender, acid-stained fingers. His scant, light
hair was ruffled and needed to be trimmed, his cravat uneven, and his
dress clothes formal and old-fashioned.
There was Dr. Fred Hajek, too, pronounced “Hiyek” and referred to
flippantly among the student nurses as “Hijack.” He was the interne
who lived at the hospital, answered the telephone nights, took care of
dressings and emergencies, and generally made himself useful. He was
considerably younger than the other two doctors, though one wouldn’t
have guessed it from his matured, well-built figure. He had a squarish
head, a ruddy face with more than a hint of the foreign in it, a hint
that was augmented by his small, black moustache, and dark eyes whose
somewhat slanted lids looked too small for the eyes and thus gave a
curious impression of tightness and restraint. He had a pleasant
manner, however, and a fresh, vigorous appearance that was not
unattractive.
Then my eyes were caught by a blond young giant who advanced as Corole
spoke.
“Jim Gainsay,” she murmured casually over her creamy brown shoulder as
she offered Maida a cocktail.
He said something or other to me politely but I saw his keen eyes go
to Maida and linger there as if unable to take themselves away, while
I quite deliberately took stock of this tall young fellow with bronzed
hands and face who built bridges here and there over the world and
looked as if he hadn’t more than got out of university. In fact, a
fraternity crest gleamed on the surface of the thin, white-gold
cigarette case that he held open in one hand as if the sight of Maida
had frozen him in the very act of drawing out a cigarette. On closer
observation, however, I was obliged to revise my hasty estimate. There
were wrinkles about his eyes; his sun-tanned eyebrows were a straight,
inscrutable line almost meeting over his nose; his jaw was lean and
rather ruthless; his smooth-fitting Tuxedo disclosed lines that were
muscular, without an ounce of superfluous flesh. Here was a man
accustomed to dealing with other men; yes, and of shaping them to suit
his own ends, or I was no judge of character.
And just then Huldah, Corole’s one maid, announced dinner somewhat
breathlessly as if she must fly back to the kitchen, and we all took
our places around the long, candle-lit table.
The soup was bad and the fish poorly seasoned, but the Virginia-baked
ham was delicious and I found myself warming to the soft, wavering
lights, the gleam of silver and glass and flowers, the white and black
contrasts presented by the men setting off Maida’s red-and-white
beauty and Corole’s rather blatant charm. Corole had charm, in spite
of my questionable adjective—charm of a sort rather flagrant and too
warm, but still it was difficult not to fall a little under its sway.
She sat at the foot of the table with Jim Gainsay on one side and Dr.
Hajek on the other. Her hair was arranged in flat, metallic, gold
waves and she wore a strange gown of gold sequins with gleams of green
showing through. It clung smoothly to her and was extremely low in the
back, showing Corole’s brownish skin almost to the waist, and I could
not help speculating on the probable reaction of our board of
directors to such a gown worn by our head doctor’s housekeeper. Corole
was a cousin of Dr. Letheny’s and had kept house for him since the
death of old Madame Letheny. We knew little of her history and I
should have liked to know more, though I am not inquisitive. I often
wondered what circumstances produced the brown-skinned, gold-haired
Corole we knew. She was a great deal like a luxuriant Persian cat; she
even had topaz eyes and a peculiarly lazy grace.
The conversation during the dinner was rather languid. Corole did not
seem much concerned about the dinner, but she was a little abstracted,
though automatically, if one-sidedly, flirting with Jim Gainsay, who
had eyes for no one but Maida. That was very clear to me, though none
of the others seemed to notice it—with the possible exception of Dr.
Letheny, who saw everything through the perpetual cloud of cigarette
smoke that almost obscured his narrow, dark eyes. Dr. Balman was
frankly absorbed in dinner and admitted that he had been interested in
a laboratory experiment and had not eaten during the day.
“But you left it to come to my dinner,” smiled Corole.
“Oh, no,” said Dr. Balman flatly, without looking up from his salad.
“I had finished anyhow.”
“Oh,” said Corole, and Dr. Letheny’s thin mouth curved the least bit.
“So you have been bridge-building in Uruguay?” I addressed Jim
Gainsay. He turned his keen eyes steadily toward me.
“Yes.”
“I suppose Uruguay is now prosperous, European, and civilized?” I went
on, hoping to get him started telling of some of the adventures that
must have befallen him. I have an explorer’s instincts and
stay-at-home habits, so have to get my travels by proxy.
“Yes. Though the remoter portions are still, in some respects, the
Banda Oriental.”
“The Banda Oriental?” said Corole blankly.
“The Purple Land that England lost,” said Maida softly, and Gainsay’s
eyes met hers with quick interest—interest and something more.
Corole’s eyelids flickered.
“Serve coffee in the Doctor’s study, Huldah,” she said. “And open the
windows.”
The night had turned unbelievably sultry while we sat at the table, so
hot that the very breath of the tapers seemed unbearable and we all
felt relieved, I think, to leave the table and dispose ourselves
comfortably in the great, cushioned chairs and divans in Dr. Letheny’s
study. The one lamp on the table was enough, though it left the room
for the most part in shadow—rather uncanny green shadow, for the lamp
was shaded with green silk and fringe. The windows had been flung to
the top but there was not a breeze stirring, even here on the windward
side of the hill, and it was so quiet that we could hear the katydids
and crickets down in the orchard, and the faint strains of radio music
from the open windows of the hospital, whose lights gleamed dully
through the trees.
“Radio in a hospital?” queried Jim Gainsay amusedly.
“Lord, yes!” Dr. Letheny’s voice was edgy. “You have been out of the
world a long time, Jim, not to know that a fashionable hospital must
have all the latest fancies, including the best radio set to be had,
with specially made loud-speakers connecting with it in every room.
The money that is wasted,” he added bitterly, “on such notions could
be employed to a good deal better advantage in other ways. How can
we make much headway in research if all our money must be thrown
away on—on lawns and flowers—” he waved impatiently toward the
hospital—“on expensive apparatus that we seldom if ever use, on
eight-thousand-dollar ambulances, on weather-staining bricks, on——”
“On radios,” suggested Gainsay blandly.
Dr. Letheny smiled faintly but the hand that lit a fresh cigarette
seemed a little unsteady.
“On radios,” he agreed.
“You are right though, Dr. Letheny.” Dr. Balman, who had apparently
been engaged in digesting his dinner, spoke so suddenly that I jumped.
He lounged toward the window and stood with his hands in his pockets
looking down at St. Ann’s lights.
“You are right,” he repeated. “If I had one-half the money that is
thrown away down there the experiment that failed for me this
afternoon might have succeeded.” The bitterness in his voice was so
grim that I think we all felt a little startled and uncomfortable.
All, that is, except Corole, whose feelings are not easily accessible
and who was manipulating the coffee machine over by the lamp. Its
light brought the flat, gold waves of her hair into relief.
“Here is the coffee,” she said huskily. “As coffee should be: black as
night, hot as hell, and sweet as love.” She offered the tiny cup to
Gainsay.
Well, the rest of us had heard her say that before and Gainsay did not
appear to hear her now. I could see that she was hesitating on the
verge of repetition, but she was too wise for that.
“Can’t you stop needless expenditure?” asked Gainsay.
“Stop it?” Dr. Letheny laughed acidly. “Stop it when the hospital is
privately endowed and the board of directors a bunch of ignorant,
conceited asses! Look at this matter of radium. Nothing must do but
that we buy a whole gram of radium. They had heard of radium. Other
hospitals had it. Radium we must have and radium we bought. But try to
talk to them of research, of discovering a new remedy for an old need,
of the necessity for laboratories, for equipment, for study. You might
as well try to stop the thunder storm that is coming as to ask them to
see anything that is not squarely in front of their fat stomachs.”
“But radium,” said Gainsay mildly, “is a good thing for a hospital to
have, isn’t it? I thought it a great discovery.”
“Of course, of course!” broke in Dr. Balman. “But we don’t need that
much. Half a gram, a fourth of it—even a sixth of it would have served
our purpose. But no! We must spend sixty-five thousand dollars for one
tiny gram of radium. Sixty-five thousand dollars! And to my plea for
half of that—only half of that money—they laughed. Laughed at study!
At research! At laboratories and equipment! And called me a visionary.
God! A visionary!”
It must have been that the increasing sultriness of the night and the
tension of the approaching storm made us all a little nervous and
easily stirred. A curious hush followed Franz Balman’s outbreak,
during which I became aware of the heavy breathing of Dr. Hajek near
me. I stirred impatiently and moved away. I had never either liked or
disliked Fred Hajek, but that night I felt suddenly a sharp distaste
for him. The atmosphere in the room seemed unbearably heavy and I
shivered a little despite the heat and wondered if my dinner was not
going to agree with me.
Gainsay got up, moved to get an ash tray, and sat down again in
another chair. I noted that the move brought him nearer Maida, whose
fine white profile was visible in the shadow near the window. She did
not smoke—not, I believe, from any fastidious prejudice, but merely
from distaste—and her hands, delicate yet strong, lay passively on the
carved arms of the chair. She was the kind of person whose silences
seem thoughtful and neither flat nor detached; a most companionable
person to have around.
Corole noted the move, too, for she took my seat next to Hajek and
murmured something under her breath to him.
“Are you both experimenting in the same field?” asked Gainsay, his
ordinary, easy tone making my disquiet seem uncalled-for and silly.
“No,” said Dr. Letheny shortly.
“No,” said Dr. Balman. He turned abruptly away from the window and sat
down at the shadowy end of the davenport; his shirt front thrust
itself up in an ungainly hump but he did not appear to care.
“Well,” said Corole, “if I were a millionaire I should give you both
the money to work to your heart’s content.”
“Indeed.” Dr. Letheny spoke so satirically that I feared an outburst
from our hostess, whose temper was never of the best.
But she surprised me.
“No!” she retracted with disarming frankness. From habit Corole could
lie like a trooper, but when she was inclined toward truth-telling she
was quite candidly honest. “No,” she went on, “if I had a million
dollars I should spend it—oh, _how_ I should spend it! Silks and furs
and jewels and servants and cars and cities and——”
“By that time it would be gone,” observed Dr. Letheny drily.
“Maybe,” Corole laughed huskily. “But how gloriously gone.”
“I suppose,” began Fred Hajek, with a little of the awkwardness that
assails one who has remained silent a long time while others of the
group are talking, “I suppose that idea is a sort of unacknowledged
fairy dream hidden in everyone’s mind.”
“Of course.” Dr. Letheny’s voice grated to my ears. “Everybody wants
money. Usually for reasons such as Corole has so charmingly admitted.”
“Not always,” disagreed Gainsay. “You and—er—Dr. Balman have just
agreed that you both needed it for research.”
“A selfish reason, though,” replied Dr. Letheny. “We get the same
pleasurable reaction out of study and science that Corole does out of
clothes and jewels and—cream in general. Miss Keate, over there,” he
nodded toward me, “gets the same kick out of hard work and a
smooth-running hospital routine. Only her—demands——are not so
expensive.”
His tone irritated me. It may be true that I am considered something
of a martinet, especially among the student nurses, but somebody has
to see to things.
“Nonsense,” I spoke sharply. “I want money just as much as anybody.”
I suppose my words rang sincere, for Dr. Letheny sat up.
“What is your repressed desire, Sarah Keate?” he demanded with just
the shade of amusement in his voice that always riled me. “Come on,
out with it! Do you long for the gay night life? Or have you secret
urges to become a front-page sensation?”
And I must say that, in the light of what was to occur, it was
remarkable that he said just that.
“She might make a splendid aviatrix,” said Jim Gainsay, smiling into
the dusk.
After that I was not going to tell them that above all things I longed
to travel and that everybody knows travel costs money. I said curtly:
“Everybody wants money.”
“How about you, Maida?” broke in Corole rather maliciously.
Maida is, as a rule, almost too perfect at the art of concealing her
emotions. It may have been that the semi-darkness of the room
concealed an intended air of frivolousness, or it may have been that
the threat of the approaching storm plucked at her nerves and pierced
her habitual armour of reserve. At any rate her answer was unexpected.
“Money!” she said. “Money! I think I would give my very soul for
money!”
Of course, I knew she didn’t mean that. But Dr. Letheny shot her a
glance that fairly pierced the dusk, Corole laughed a little metallic
ripple, and Jim Gainsay turned straightway around in his chair to face
Maida’s shadowed eyes.
“I haven’t any money,” he said directly and quite as if Maida had
asked him a question, though I think the others were too preoccupied
to observe this. “I haven’t any money at all.”
“And are you happy without it, Jim?” asked Corole, her warm voice
caressing.
“Well . . .” Jim Gainsay paused. “I was, until lately.”
He was still speaking to Maida. I believe Dr. Letheny understood that
somewhat singular fact, also, for he spoke so quietly that there was a
suggestion of deliberate restraint about his words.
“And what do you intend to do in the face of this sudden realization?”
“Make some money,” replied Jim Gainsay simply.
Dr. Letheny laughed—not pleasantly.
“But my dear fellow, is it so simple as that?”
“It should not be difficult.” Gainsay did not appear to be disturbed
by the perceptible edge of irony in Dr. Letheny’s questions.
“Owing to the fact that several billions of people over the face of
the earth are engaged in profitless efforts in that direction, will
you tell us just how you propose to accomplish it with such
expedition?”
“Certainly not. If I can manage to lay my hands on—say—fifty thousand
I can make—oh, as much money as I want. I can do it. And I will.” He
was grave and yet quite casual. A mere matter of information for
Maida. If she wanted money he would see that she got it and that was
that! It seemed so clear to me that I felt something very like
embarrassment, though neither Maida nor Jim Gainsay seemed disturbed.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” mused Dr. Letheny softly. “That is quite a
lot of money. Many a man has failed for its—inaccessibility.”
“I’ll get it all right,” said Jim Gainsay.
“And when you get it what are you going to do with it? How are you
going to make it grow into as much money as you want?”
“Contracting.” There was an undercurrent in the short reply that
warned Dr. Letheny off.
Corole laughed again.
“Funny!” she said. “Every single one of us has confessed to a fervent
desire for money. That is, all but Franz and Dr. Hajek. And we all
know that Franz would give his very eyes—no, he needs them for
experiment—ten years of his life, then, for money to carry on those
same precious experiments.”
“It is a good thing we are all law-abiding citizens,” I remarked
drily.
“I think I shall be on the safe side, though, and lock up my jewels
to-night!” said Corole.
“Don’t be a fool,” observed Dr. Letheny.
Corole’s topaz eyes caught a glint of angry green light.
“Why, really, Louis, being what one can’t help is better, at any rate,
than longing for what one can’t get.”
Her somewhat stupid reply did not, to my mind, warrant its effect. Dr.
Letheny moved suddenly upright in his chair, his thin lips drawn tight
over his teeth.
“Until later, dear cousin.” The words had a sharp edge of fury. “Until
later. We have guests at present.”
I could only suppose that the stifling atmosphere had disturbed Dr.
Letheny’s always hair-trigger nerves. Otherwise he had not been so
needlessly vulgar. He was a brilliant man with a cutting tongue, but
gossip had whispered that what Corole lacked in the way of brains she
more than made up for in feline cunning of attack. This was the first
time, however, that I had heard the two ill-assorted housemates come
to open and bad-mannered warfare.
Dr. Hajek relieved the strained silence that naturally followed the
little contretemps.
“I hear that you used the radium to-day.” He had a peculiarly
inflectionless manner of speech that made him seem heavy and dull.
“Yes.” Dr. Letheny rose and pulled the curtain still farther from the
window. “Torrid night, isn’t it? Yes, we are trying it for old Mr.
Jackson.” He paused. “I don’t know that it will do any good,” he added
callously. “But we may as well try it. By the way, Miss Keate, I shall
be in shortly after midnight to see how the patient is getting on. You
might leave the south door unlocked for me. Let me see—he is in Room
18, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“So you are going to Russia on another bridge project, Jim?” Dr.
Letheny was again master of himself.
“What—oh, yes! Yes.” Jim Gainsay started a little as if Dr. Letheny
had recalled him to a forgotten fact.
“Will it be a long stay?”
“Why, yes, probably. It should take about two or three years. It will
be an interesting job. The preliminaries are rather sketchy, but it
looks as though there might be some problems involved.”
He spoke in an oddly detached way, as if he were not much interested
in the subject, and it was not surprising that the conversation
flattened out again. Presently Corole suggested bridge and even made
up a table, but Dr. Balman definitely refused to play and Jim Gainsay,
being engaged in watching Maida’s eyelashes, did not appear to hear
Corole’s suggestion that he make a fourth, so Dr. Letheny made a
reluctant partner for me against Corole and Dr. Hajek. However, we
played only a few desultory hands until Maida and Gainsay drifted over
to the window and fell into a low-voiced conversation, when Dr.
Letheny, who had been darting quick glances in that direction, trumped
my ace, flung down his cards, said it was too rotten hot to play and,
paying no attention to Corole’s protests, went to the piano.
Dr. Letheny was a discriminative musician of far more than amateur
skill, and the great, jarring, Moscow bells of the C Sharp Minor
Prelude presently surged over the room. I am a practical,
matter-of-fact woman and I have never been able to account for the
strange disquietude that crept over me as I listened. It was the
strangest thing in a strange and unreal evening. The couple at the
window turned and moved closer together. Corole’s flat eyes caught the
light like a cat’s. Dr. Balman stared at nothing from the shadows and
worried his beard. Only Dr. Hajek was unmoved by that passionate sweep
of sound.
All at once the room was intolerable to me. I twisted about in my
chair and fought down a childish desire to run from its heat and
breathlessness. And then the keys under Dr. Letheny’s white fingers
slipped into the higher notes of the second movement and a hot, fetid
breath of air from the hushed night billowed the curtain a little and
touched my hot face and heightened the nightmare that had taken
possession of me.
By the time the climax had carried us all along with it in its
torrent, and the Doctor had sat, in the hush that followed the last
note, for a long moment before he turned to us again,—by that time
little beads of perspiration shone all along the backs of my hands and
my heart was pumping as if I had been running a race.
I rose.
“I must go,” I said, my voice breaking harshly into the silence. “I
must go. It is nearly twelve.”
“Yes,” said Maida. “Yes. We must go.”
Somehow we got away. I remember being vaguely surprised when Jim
Gainsay merely took Maida’s hand for a conventional instant, although
I’m sure I don’t know what I had expected.
Maida and I walked slowly, feeling our way through the great, black
velvet curtain that was the night. The hospital was now darkened and
the path twisted unexpectedly. The air was as heavy with the presage
of storm, there under the trees, as it had been in Corole’s lamp-lit
house. The sky was thick and black with not the glimmer of a star
showing through. The katydids and crickets were all hushed as if
waiting. The path was hot under our thin-soled slippers, the alfalfa
sickeningly sweet in its warm breath, the shadows of the thickets were
dense and not a leaf stirred. I know that orchard and those clusters
of trees and elderberries and sumac as well as I know the twists and
turns of the old hospital corridors, and never until that night did I
catch my breath when my hand brushed against a leaf, or take a long
sigh of relief when we emerged from those suddenly unfriendly thickets
into the silence of the long, night-lighted corridor of the south
wing.
Up in the everyday surroundings of the nurses’ dormitory I still
failed to shake off the sense of the unreal that had come over me.
Together we changed into our crisp, white uniforms. I remember we
talked of silly, inconsequential things—such as the sogginess of the
bread pudding we had had for lunch, and the new cuff-links that Maida
was inserting into her cuffs. They were small squares of lapis-lazuli
edged in engraved white gold. Lovely though they were, they yet
contrived to be simple and dignified at the same time.
“I like lapis,” said Maida without much interest. “I like things that
are real.” She was adjusting her proud, white cap as she spoke. In
spite of the businesslike white linen that became her so well, she was
still the flushed and vivid Maida of the blue and crystal-frosted
dinner gown, whose eyes had grown starry under Jim Gainsay’s regard. I
sighed as I pinned on my own cap. I had always felt that if love came
to Maida it would be swift and compelling.
I thrust in the pin too forcefully and withdrew my scratched thumb
with an irritated exclamation. I had read somewhere that thin old
maids were pathetic and fat old maids gross and all old maids
sentimental, and had resolved to be none of the three, myself.
So, I was not in the best of moods as I wound my watch, took my way to
the south wing, and stopped at the desk for a glance at the charts. If
only the storm would break and give us a breath of fresh, cool air.
The two nurses going off duty were very evidently glad to be relieved.
“It is a queer night,” said one of them, Olma Flynn. “Makes me feel
creepy.”
“H’m,” I spoke brusquely. “Likely you have been eating green apples
again.” And she flounced indignantly away.