Dr. Letheny Does Not Return
From sheer fatigue, however, I must have dozed for I awoke at the
sound of a repeated knocking at the door. It was a frightened little
student nurse wanting to know if all training classes and lectures
were to be suspended.
“Suspended?” I said, the horror of the past night sweeping over me.
“Suspended? I—why, Dr. Letheny will tell you.”
She blinked.
“But Dr. Letheny—we—they—nobody knows where Dr. Letheny has gone.”
“What!” I was fully awake.
“No, ma’am. They can’t find him anywhere.” Frightened though she was,
she yet appeared to take a naïve relish in being the first to tell me
the news. “They can’t find him at all. Miss Letheny has telephoned
everywhere that he might be and the police are working on it and they
have been asking us all kinds of questions.”
I reached for a fresh uniform.
“I’ll come down immediately,” I said. “About the training classes, did
you speak to Dr. Balman?”
“No. Miss Dotty said to find out if you knew what was to be done.”
Which was like Miss Dotty, she being amiable but not very
clear-thinking.
“Dr. Balman is Dr. Letheny’s assistant. I have nothing to do with it.”
The little student nurse rustled away and ten minutes later, refreshed
by a bath and a clean uniform, I followed her.
I found the main portion of the hospital fairly shuddering with
excitement. To my extreme annoyance it appeared that the moronic
fraction of our nursing staff was beginning to take a melancholy
satisfaction in the tumult and posing freely for the reporters who,
with their flashlight affairs, were swarming over the whole place. I
might say here and now that I soon stopped that and did not mince
matters in so doing, though I could not prevent the headlines that had
already found their way into the city newspapers.
In the main office Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek, both looking worn and
haggard, were literally surrounded by our board of directors who, it
seemed, had descended in a body and were determined to hold somebody
responsible for the terrible thing that had occurred. I learned later
that there was some trouble in convincing them that Mr. Jackson’s
death was not due to a mistake on the part of the nurses. Some
policemen were in the room, too, and the chief of police, himself, a
burly fellow who looked habitually as if his darkest suspicions were
about to be verified.
This expression intensified itself as I entered the room, which, by
the way, was the first indication of a fact that later became all too
painfully evident, namely that I, Sarah Keate, occupied a prominent
place in the list of suspects, for had I not been in the south wing?
Had I not been in a position to administer the morphine that caused
the patient’s death? Had I not been the one to find him?
One or two of the board had the grace to rise as I entered, but most
of them were too agitated to remember their manners.
“What is this about Dr. Letheny?” I began.
“Are you Miss Keate?” asked the chief of police.
“Yes,” I replied, none too graciously.
“We were just about to send for you,” he informed me. “Now suppose you
tell us everything you know of this affair. Mind, I say _everything_.”
I turned to Dr. Balman.
“Hasn’t Dr. Letheny returned yet?”
He shook his head slowly.
“Come, come, Miss Keate,” said the chief.
“Doesn’t Miss Letheny know where he is?” I insisted anxiously.
“Apparently not.” It was Dr. Hajek who answered.
“Will you answer my questions?” demanded the chief loudly.
“Another time,” I stated impatiently. Didn’t the man see what the
pressing issue was! “When did Miss Letheny see him last?”
Dr. Hajek shook his head. “She has not seen him since last night about
twelve-thirty.”
The chief rose.
“Now, look here! We’ll have no more funny business,” he began to
bluster.
“Oh, _do_ be still!” I may have spoken somewhat irritably; at any rate
the chief turned purple. “Don’t you see,” I explained reasonably,
“don’t you see that we must find Dr. Letheny? That so much hinges upon
our finding him? Why, so far as we know, _he_ decided to remove the
radium, perhaps he——” I stuck, appalled by the literal truth of my
words.
The chief was quick to pick me up.
“So you have already formed your opinion. And quite right, too. It is
very clear that this Letheny fellow has got away with the radium.” The
chief actually began rubbing his hands together and smiling. “Now,
Miss Keate, just tell us why you suspect Dr. Letheny of this crime.”
“But I don’t!” I cried in exasperation. “I have not had time to
suspect anyone yet. I have been too busy. The reason I spoke as I did
of Dr. Letheny is that he is the attendant physician; he knew more of
Mr. Jackson’s condition than any of us. He may have decided that the
radium was—er—not doing any good and may have removed it for that
reason. It seems to me that our hands are tied without him.”
“Just a moment, chief,” remarked one of the most intelligent members
of the board. “Suppose we follow your suggestion and leave all
investigation until this man—what is his name?”
“Lance O’Leary,” supplied the chief sulkily.
“Until this Lance O’Leary gets here. You seem to have great confidence
in him and——”
“Him and me always work together,” interpolated the chief.
“He is out of town at present,” went on the board member, addressing
me.
“Suits me,” said the chief. “I’ve wired him and he will be here on the
afternoon train. We’ve got everything under guard and can leave the
room just as we found it.”
“Then there is no need for us to stay any longer,” remarked a
particularly well-fed board member, getting fussily to his feet and
kicking a little to shake down his trousers over his fat calves. “I’ve
got to get to the office. And now see here, Dr. Balman—and you
others—of course we don’t say that this is your fault——”
“Well, I should hope not!” I interrupted tartly.
“Your fault,” he repeated, eyeing me severely. “But at the same time
it shouldn’t have happened. There is something wrong somewhere. Here
we go and put sixty-five thousand dollars into a whole gram of radium
and now look what happens!” The other members shook their fat cheeks
in sympathy.
“You seem to forget,” I remarked with some asperity, “that there was
also a murder in the hospital last night, which might have been
prevented had we had an emergency gas line installed. We were without
lights a good share of the night.”
This was not quite true, in that the murder had been committed, I had
no doubt, before the lights had gone out, but the subject of gas for
emergency use had been a matter of contention between the board and
the staff for some time and I was glad to note that the entire board
looked distinctly uneasy as it filed fatly from the office.
“A splendid group of gentlemen,” commented the chief approvingly.
“Then we are to do nothing until this detective arrives?” I asked
impatiently.
“So it seems,” said Dr. Balman, sighing wearily.
“Yes, and nothing is enough,” said the chief, whose name, by the way,
proved to be Blunt. “Once Lance O’Leary gets his teeth in anything it
is as good as finished. Say—I could tell you things——”
“If only we could find Dr. Letheny,” I reflected. “It is so strange,
his disappearing like this and at such a time.”
“Maybe it ain’t so strange as you think,” remarked Chief Blunt. “There
is many a man would like to disappear with about sixty-five thousand
dollars in his pocket. Say, what does that radium look like? How would
you carry it anyhow? Wouldn’t it burn you?”
“It is carried in a small steel box that is especially made to protect
it—and you,” explained Dr. Balman. As I glanced at him I was struck by
the unbelievably drawn and haggard appearance of his face, which was
intensified by a bruise on one cheek bone that was turning a dark,
purplish green. “It would be a ticklish thing to dispose of,” he added
thoughtfully.
“Well, we shall have some disclosures in another night,” said the
chief comfortably. “And mark my words, this Letheny has had something
to do with it. A man don’t disappear like this for nothing. In the
meantime we’ll guard Room 18 and keep everybody away from it. And let
nobody leave or come into the hospital.”
“No visitors?” I inquired, with the first shade of approval I had felt
for the chief so far.
“No visitors,” he agreed.
“And in the meantime,” said Dr. Balman, “business as usual. Eh, Miss
Keate?”
“By all means. But Dr. Balman—you don’t think that Dr. Letheny killed
Mr. Jackson and got away with the radium——”
“Certainly not,” said Dr. Balman. “There is nothing upon which to base
such a conclusion.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” muttered Chief Blunt from the depths of
the telephone transmitter.
It took a few moments for Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek to arrange between
them to take over Dr. Letheny’s work in case, we were careful to say,
Dr. Letheny did not come to St. Ann’s that day, while Chief Blunt put
the telephone to such good use that at the end of a few minutes he
assured us that Dr. Letheny would be found within twenty-four hours.
This I thought to be a somewhat sweeping prophecy but said nothing.
Leaving the office, I walked thoughtfully down to the south wing. It
was a compliment to St. Ann’s routine that, with the exception of a
certain nervousness on the part of the nurses, all was quite as it
should be. Morning baths had been given, breakfasts were all over and
rooms dusted, and discipline in general had been maintained. However,
there is no use saying things were just as usual for they were not. It
was dark and cold that morning, with one of those quick changes of
temperature for which our part of the country is famous. The electric
service had not yet been repaired and there were lamps at intervals
along the corridor. Miss Dotty, wisely for once, had doubled the
number of girls on duty, and blue-striped skirts and white aprons of
training nurses, as well as the severe white of graduate nurses,
glimmered everywhere.
So far we had been successful in keeping the news of the murder from
the ears of the patients, but of course they were aware of some kind
of disturbance during the night, and several of them were quite fussy
and upset and demanded to be moved to another wing, which naturally we
could not do. We kept the newspapers from them, too, but one of the
minor troubles of the day was the continual telephone calls from
anxious relatives, which began as soon as the morning extras were out.
Oh, yes, the newspapers got out extras with all kinds of pictures and
the most absurd statements that made St. Ann’s appear to be something
between a boarding school and a den of iniquity. This unfortunate
impression was helped by the pictures of nurses in conjunction with
the murder and radium theft.
And in spite of our efforts to carry on work the same as usual, in
spite of cleaned rooms and spick-and-span corridors and careful
charts, there lingered, somehow, pervading the very old walls of St.
Ann’s, a certain gloom, a sense of foreboding, that centred in the
south wing.
Room 18 was closed and guarded by a stalwart policeman, who sat
uncompromisingly in front of the door, but that end of the corridor
was shunned as if there were live smallpox there, and when one of the
nurses had to go to Room 17, opposite, or to the next room, Sixteen,
she quite frankly sought the company of another nurse.
Old Mr. Jackson’s lawyer had been notified immediately of the tragedy,
I learned, and he, in turn, had notified the dead man’s only
relatives, a cousin and a nephew, living somewhere in the East. Along
in the middle of the morning a rather impersonal telegram came from
them to Chief Blunt, bidding him spare no expense and keep them
informed of developments.
What with one thing and another I had very little time of my own until
about two o’clock in the afternoon when, after firmly getting rid of
Miss Dotty, who evidenced a distressing disposition to cling and
whisper in horrified italics, I sat down at the south-wing chart desk,
drew a blank chart toward me, and presenting as forbidding a back
against interruption as I could, I tried to think. Until that moment
the whirl of events had so caught me that I had had to act and had had
literally no time in which to consider the matter.
I began, logically enough, at twelve-thirty, the time I had last seen
Dr. Letheny. In spite of my defence of Dr. Letheny before Chief Blunt,
I felt in my heart that his absence at such a time was, to say the
least, rather strange.
It had been a queer night, even before its shocking development; that
strange dinner at Corole’s, where everyone had seemed strung to such a
singular pitch of excitement, our walk home through the suffocating
heat, Maida’s preoccupation, my own disquiet, the storm—— And now a
memory recurred to me with such force that I almost jumped—that man
with whom I had collided there at the corner of the porch! Who was he?
What had he been doing?
And then, of course, I recalled the flat, smooth object I had found at
the edge of the orchard, there below the kitchen window.
It took only a moment or two to hurry to my room and dive my hand into
the pocket of my soiled uniform. Then I sank down on the edge of the
bed, staring at the thing in my hand.
I recognized it at once.
It was Jim Gainsay’s cigarette case.
The engraved fraternity shield winked at me as I turned it over in my
hands and snapped it open; inside were two or three cigarettes;
dazedly I noted the brand—Belwood’s. Jim Gainsay! It was he, then,
whom I had met there at the steps of the porch. What had he been
doing? What had been his business about St. Ann’s after midnight? And
my breath caught and my heart began to pound as I recalled his words
of the previous night: “If I can manage to lay my hands on fifty
thousand dollars . . . can make as much money as I want . . . I can do
it . . . _and I will_.”
And he had heard our discussion of the radium. He had even heard—yes,
I remembered distinctly—he had even heard in what room the radium was
in use and that the south door was to be left unlocked. To be sure, I
might have been expected to lock the door following Dr. Letheny’s
visit, but there were windows and——
Someone was knocking at the door and I had barely time to slip the
cigarette case under the pillow. It was Miss Dotty, her eyes fairly
popping with excitement.
“Where is the key to the closet in the south wing?”
“What closet? There are several——”
“I mean the closet in Room 18, of course. Do you have the key?”
“No. And I don’t know where it is. Who wants it?”
“They want it downstairs.”
“They?”
“That little, slim detective. He has just come. And oh, Miss Keate, he
is so handsome,” she rolled her rather vacant eyes upward.
“Who is handsome?” I spoke somewhat snappishly. Miss Dotty’s
rhapsodies aggravate me.
“That Mr. O’Leary. Just wait till you see him. Such a way of speaking!
Such clothes! And his eyes are simply wonderful!” Miss Dotty appeared
to recall herself from Mr. O’Leary’s charms with difficulty. “But I
must hurry. They said if we couldn’t find the key they would have to
take the door off the hinges.”
“Take the hinges off, you mean. Indeed they shan’t! That lovely
gumwood door! They’ll be sure to scar it. Maybe some of the student
nurses locked it. Ask them. Or—wait! I’ll come down myself.”
But Miss Dotty’s starched skirts were already scuttling away.
Before leaving the room, and not without a guilty feeling in my heart,
I placed the cigarette case in a safe hiding place which was nothing
more nor less than the bottom of my laundry bag. Almost without
conscious volition on my part I had resolved to keep the matter of the
cigarette case a secret and in my own possession, at least until I
knew more certainly where my duty lay concerning it. It carried with
it too grave an implication to act upon readily.
Then, still preoccupied, I took my way downstairs, through the main
portion of St. Ann’s, past the general office, and turned into the
corridor leading to the south wing. As I approached the chart desk,
one of the student nurses seized upon me tearfully with a tale of
Three’s hysterics, and wouldn’t I help for she had not the least idea
what to do. There was nothing for it but to go to her assistance, much
as I was interested in the proceedings in Room 18. And it was a good
thing for me that I did! Otherwise I should have been in the room when
they opened the closet door.
Three’s hysterics proved to be of an unusually stubborn kind, really
virulent in fact, and though I was aware of a sort of subdued
confusion and tremor of excitement outside the door I could not
clearly understand what it was about. I heard faintly the sound of
hammering, of feet running along the corridor, of a man’s voice
calling out something indistinguishable, and a hastily hushed, woman’s
scream which Three promptly and wilfully echoed. Then several people
hurried through the hall, and as they passed the door I heard the
unmistakable little metallic rattle of the wheels of the
stretcher-truck, and caught the words—“Call Dr. Balman,” and something
about an ambulance.
This was too much for me and I left my patient as soon as possible. No
one was to be seen in the corridor, however, so I walked hurriedly
down toward Room 18. Just as I reached it a policeman opened it, saw
me, slid hastily through the narrow aperture and, closing the door,
stood squarely before it.
“You can’t go in there, miss,” he said firmly.
“But—what has happened? What is all the commotion about?”
“You can’t go in there,” he repeated stupidly. To my surprise I saw
that the man was actually frightened. His eyes were staring, his
weather-beaten face a sort of yellow-green, and his breath coming in
gasps. “You can’t go in there. You can’t——”
He seemed capable only of keeping me out of the room, so without
wasting time or effort I turned about and retraced my steps. As I
passed the linen-closet door I saw a group of nurses inside. One of
them was lying back in a chair in a dead faint and the others were
clustered around talking excitedly in low voices and nearly drowning
the recumbent one with cold water.
“What on earth?” I exclaimed and at my voice they turned; one of them
was frankly sobbing and the other two were white as ghosts.
“Oh, Miss K-K——” began one, her teeth chattering so she could not
speak, while the others just stood there with their mouths opening and
closing like so many fish. Naturally it was very trying and I believe
I shook her till her teeth chattered in good earnest.
“Now tell me what has happened,” I said, releasing her shoulders.
“Oh, Miss Keate, the most terrible thing has——”
“Is this Miss Keate?” interrupted a clear voice from the doorway.
I whirled.
A man stood in the doorway; at the moment I was conscious only of a
pair of extraordinarily lucid gray eyes; later I noted that he was
slender and not very tall, that his gray business suit was well
tailored, his gray socks of heavy silk and with a small scarlet
thread, his scarf neatly knotted and chosen with care, his face
clean-shaven, with clear rather delicately cut features, and that he
wore an air of well-groomed prosperity. I knew at once that this was
Lance O’Leary.
“I am Miss Keate,” I replied.
“I am Lance O’Leary,” he said (superfluously, but he did not know
that). “I should like to talk to you if you have time. Will you come
to the office with me, please—I think we shall be undisturbed there.”
Being a woman of some strength of mind, I had intended to take a firm
line with this detective whom everyone seemed to think so remarkable,
but I found myself walking as meekly as any lamb at his side, and once
inside the general office with the door closed, I sat as resignedly in
a chair opposite him as if there were not a thousand and one things
that I should be doing.
“You are the superintendent of the south wing?” He spoke very quietly
and with what I found later to be a wholly deceptive air of
detachment.
“Yes.”
“You were on duty last night between twelve and six o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Maida Day was your assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Balman tells me that Miss Day telephoned to him about two
o’clock—possibly ten minutes before the hour. I judge that was only a
few moments after you found that your patient was dead?”
“Yes. It must have been about that time. It was something after
one-thirty when the storm broke and I hurried along the corridor and
closed the south door. Then I closed the window in Room 17 and went
directly into Eighteen.” My voice was not quite steady at the
recollection of those moments and he waited briefly, his clear eyes
studying a pencil in his hands, before he went on.
“The windows in Room 18 were also open?”
“Yes. All the windows in the wing were open. It had been very hot and
close before the storm began.”
He nodded.
“Those windows are not far from the ground. Do you think someone from
outside could get into the hospital without attracting your
attention?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “It might be done but does not seem very
probable. With the doors to the sick-rooms open and the night so still
I believe I should have heard any unusual sound. But the door to
Eighteen was closed. I can’t be sure.”
“You heard no unusual sound, then?”
“Why, no—except that a few moments before the storm began I heard a
sort of bang—as if a window had dropped to the sill. It was not very
clear.”
He was looking directly into my face, his eyes as clear as water.
“You are sure it was a window? It might have been a door closing.”
“It was not the door for it was still open. I am not sure—I
investigated but found nothing. The south door was still open—and as
far as I could tell the windows were as they had been.”
“Did you look in Room 18?”
“Yes.”
There was a slight pause. Then:
“The patient was—quiet at the time?”
“The room was dark and still so I did not enter it. I just stood there
for a moment holding the door half open; I was afraid if I entered the
room I would wake him. He was asleep—that is——” I stopped abruptly as
it occurred to me that he had not been asleep; that the incident had
occurred not more than fifteen minutes before I found him dead.
O’Leary seemed to read my thoughts.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “He must have been dead—then. Can you be
certain of the time?”
“Yes. It was shortly after one-thirty. I remember because I had just
noted the time on a patient’s chart, when I heard that dull sound and
went to see what it was.”
He returned to his pencil, a shabby little red thing it was, which he
rolled absently between his well-kept fingers.
“Was this sound sharp and loud?”
“No—” I hesitated, trying to recall just how it had seemed. “No—it was
rather dull—muffled—and yet heavy. It was not very distinct.”
“There were no other unusual circumstances? Nothing out of the
ordinary?”
“Why, yes. There was someone—a man——” I broke off abruptly. That man
must have been Jim Gainsay. I had no wish to involve him in the
matter, at least until I became convinced that his movements should be
investigated.
But Lance O’Leary’s gray eyes looked straight through to my back hair.
“Yes?” he inquired.
“Yes.” I spoke with an accent of finality, and gazed nonchalantly out
the window as if the subject were closed.
“Where was he?”
“Running around the hospital,” I replied curtly, wishing I had held my
tongue.
“Around and around?” inquired O’Leary blandly.
“No,” I snapped. “Running along the east side of the wing. I—he—we
collided.”
O’Leary sat up straighter.
“What!”
“I had gone out on the porch for a breath of fresh air,” I explained
rather sullenly. “Just as I stepped off the porch I ran into him.”
I stopped as if the incident were concluded.
“Go on,” suggested the O’Leary man after waiting a moment; he was
being very polite and very pleasant and altogether disagreeable.
“That’s all,” I said waspishly. I fastened my gaze on his extremely
well-made shoes—an attention that I have found invariably disconcerts
men—vain creatures! But this one was impervious.
“And what did you say?” he persisted with the most insulting
good-humour.
“I said ‘Well——’” I stared steadfastly at the shoes.
“And what did he say?”
I resisted an evil impulse to tell him literally and with feeling.
“I hope you don’t think I’d repeat such language,” I replied, and I’m
sure he smiled.
“Then what happened?”
“He—er—set me on my feet again and kept on running.”
“Very chivalrous,” remarked O’Leary. “So he kept on running—around the
hospital?”
“No,” I answered peevishly. “He ran along the path toward the bridge.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked in the direction he had come from as far as the wing extends
but saw nothing unusual.”
“Did you not call anyone? Were you not alarmed?”
“I thought of calling Higgins, the janitor, but when I found that
things seemed to be all right I decided it was not necessary.”
“Then you came back to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“And all that time you saw or heard nothing uncommon?”
“Well—I smelled something.”
He made a perceptible motion of surprise.
“You smelled something? Did you say _smelled_?”
I nodded, taking a small degree of satisfaction in his discomposure.
“As I passed that clump of elderberry bushes I smelled ether. It was
quite distinct. You know ether has a penetrating odour.”
“But surely that was unusual?”
“Yes. But the night was so hot and ether out there in the apple
orchard so impossible that I decided I must be mistaken, that it was
just the mingled scents of alfalfa and clover and other growing
things.”
“Well—which was it? Ether or imagination?”
“I don’t know,” I said firmly. “I’m just telling you what happened. I
know it sounds queer—but last night was a queer night. That dinner at
Corole’s and everything,” I finished thoughtlessly.
“Dinner at Corole’s? That is Miss Letheny?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Letheny was there?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else?”
“Yes. Miss Day, Dr. Balman, Dr. Hajek, and a friend of Dr. Letheny’s—a
Mr. Gainsay. He is an engineer who stopped for a day’s visit with
them.”
“And you and Miss Letheny?”
“Yes.”
“You implied that it was—‘queer,’ I think was the word you used. How
was it queer?”
“Oh—I scarcely know. It was very hot and oppressive you know—that sort
of electric atmosphere that precedes a thunder storm.”
“Aside from the—er—electricity in the air, was everything quite as
usual?”
I paused for a long moment before replying.
“No,” I said candidly. “I think we were all a little nervous and
uneasy on account of the heat and suffocating air. That is, I was. And
Dr. Letheny—and Miss Day——”
“But not the others?”
“Well——” It was difficult to define that curious tensity I had felt in
the air all the night. “No one seemed quite natural to me. It may have
been only I who was a little nervous. I really can’t tell you anything
definite.”
“Why did you say definitely that Dr. Letheny and Miss Day were unlike
themselves?”
“Dr. Letheny is a rather quick-spoken man—when you know him you will
understand what I mean. He goes on his nervous energy, is very
high-strung and temperamental. He seemed especially explosive last
night. And Miss Day was a little abstracted, tired, I think.”
“I suppose you talked—played bridge—had a little music?”
“Yes. All of that.”
“Any special topics of conversation?”
“No——”
He noted the uncertainty in my voice.
“Radium wasn’t mentioned?”
“Well—yes. But only in a general way.”
“Didn’t speak of using it? Having it out of the safe?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“Didn’t say for what patient it was being used? In what room?”
“Yes. But only casually.” I explained Dr. Letheny’s request to leave
the south door unlocked.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing in particular. We just talked of general matters.”
“Such as——”
I glanced at him impatiently.
“Such as?” he repeated.
“Oh—how warm it was, and how everybody longs for something that money
will buy, and how St. Ann’s is equipped with radios and expensive
ambulances and a whole gram of radium and how much such things cost
and all that—and then we played a few hands of bridge and then Dr.
Letheny played the piano and then Maida—Miss Day—and I came back
through the orchard to St. Ann’s and changed into our uniforms and
went on duty.”
“You talked of money and how everybody longs for something that money
will buy,” mused O’Leary, adding with uncanny intuition, “I suppose
several of you admitted a special desire for money?”
“Every single one of us,” I confessed. “That is, except Dr. Hajek. He
just listened and seemed amused.”
He smiled. “Don’t be alarmed over such an admission. That doesn’t mean
anything, that you all wanted money. Everyone wants money. But suppose
you tell me, word for word, as much as you can remember of the
conversation. Don’t be afraid of implicating anyone, Miss Keate. I
make the request only because I like to get as clear an idea of the
general surroundings as possible.” He smiled again. He had an
extraordinarily winning smile; it brightened his whole face, for all
that it was so brief, and I found myself warming under its influence.
Not seeing how I could possibly harm anyone I repeated as much of our
conversation as I could remember, and since I have usually a good
memory I think I omitted very little of it.
When I had finished he sat for some time turning and twisting his
pencil. I might say that I never but once saw him use that pencil
sensibly as a pencil is meant to be used. I even grew to cherish a
notion that the pencil aided his mental processes and that if it were
taken away from him his ability to think might go along with it. Like
Samson’s hair, you know. Then I aroused myself from such childish
speculation.
“If that is all——” I hinted. “This is a busy day for us, you know.”
“Not quite all, Miss Keate.” The smile had completely gone from his
face; his expression lost its youthfulness and was very grave. “When
did you last see Dr. Letheny?”
“Last night, shortly after twelve-thirty.”
“He had come to see Mr. Jackson?”
“Yes. He was here only a few moments.”
“You saw him leave?”
“Yes.”
“And he did not return, to your knowledge?”
“No.”
“He said nothing of leaving town?”
“Nothing.”
“He said nothing that would lead you to believe that he was—er—worried
about anything? Had had any trouble?”
“Nothing. I really think, Mr. O’Leary, that he will return before the
day is over. Some accident has detained him. There will be some
explanation.”
“You—admire Dr. Letheny?” Lance O’Leary was scrutinizing a dripping
shrub outside the window as he spoke.
“Yes,” I replied dubiously. “That is, he is a splendid surgeon, very
cool and very daring. I like to assist him.”
“You have known him for a long time?”
“Several years. That is, I have known him as everyone else knows him.
I do not believe that any of us feel particularly well acquainted with
him. He is rather distant, very much interested in some research that
he is carrying on.”
“You don’t know the kind of research—the special subject of study?”
“No.”
There followed a long silence; the rain beat steadily against the
window; outside in the corridor I heard the sound of the four-o’clock
nourishment trays being carried along, the glasses of orange-juice and
egg-nogg clinking together. It was chilly there in the office and I
shivered a little.
“I do wish that Dr. Letheny would return,” I said. “It is bad for the
head doctor of St. Ann’s to be away at such a time.”
Lance O’Leary turned slowly to me.
“Dr. Letheny will not return,” he said, eyeing me keenly.
“Not return? What do you mean?”
He shook his head.
“He will not return,” he said very slowly and distinctly. “Dr. Letheny
is dead.”