A Yellow Slicker and Other Problems
The slow words beat their way into my brain like so many dull little
hammers. I opened my mouth, tried to say something, but could not seem
to make him hear, felt curiously sick and dizzy, had a flashing memory
of the first time I served in the operating room and all at once the
table before me began to waver, the room whirled, and a great black
blanket overwhelmed me.
Then, without any interval at all, I found myself lying on the couch
in the inner office. I still felt sick but my face was wet and cold
and my uniform damp around my shoulders and someone was saying in a
dull voice: “Dr. Letheny is dead—Dr. Letheny is dead.”
“All right now, Miss Keate?” inquired a voice anxiously.
Wearily I opened my eyes, saw a gray arm and met the gaze of a pair of
clear gray eyes. Instantly my head cleared. I pushed away the
supporting arm and sat up, feeling automatically for my cap, though my
hands shook.
“That was beastly to shock you so,” Lance O’Leary was saying with
honest contrition. “I hope you’ll forgive me, Miss Keate, I’m really
awfully sorry.”
“Did you say—Dr. Letheny is dead?” I asked, bringing out the words
with the peculiar difficulty that one experiences in dreams.
“He is dead,” he answered gravely.
“Not—not—— Tell me how he died.”
“Are you sure you can stand it? You’ve got to know sometime.”
“Go on,” I said, bracing myself.
“He has been dead for more than twelve hours. He was in the closet in
Room 18.” He paused, regarding me doubtfully, but at my horrified
gesture continued: “He had received a blow of some kind. It fractured
his skull. He must have died immediately.”
“Wait.” Rising I walked to the window, stared with unseeing eyes at
the rain-drenched landscape, found my palms were stinging under the
pressure of my fingernails, unclinched my hands, clinched them again
and turned to face O’Leary. It was true that I had felt no fondness
for Dr. Letheny—but I had often worked at his side.
“I say, Miss Keate,” Lance O’Leary was protesting boyishly, “I’m
awfully sorry to have been so brutal about it. But you see, I had to
know whether this was news to you or not. Someone locked that closet
door, you know. And in my business we suspect everything—everybody—the
very walls themselves.”
I was too deeply shocked to be indignant at the lack of compliment in
his implication; after a moment he continued.
“There is nothing more for you to help me with now,” he said. “We just
found Dr. Letheny’s body this afternoon when we pried the closet door
off its hinges. I examined everything at once, called the ambulance,
and now the room can be cleaned and used again. The only reminder you
will have of all this, I hope, is that I shall likely be about more or
less for a few days—or longer. That depends upon the luck I have.” He
smiled again. Evidently he was trying to be as considerate as possible
and I found myself liking him. “Of course, there will have to be a
coroner’s inquest, but that is merely a matter of form and need not
annoy you. That is all now, thank you, Miss Keate. Can’t you take some
rest? Do you have night duty again to-night?”
“Yes,” I answered the last question. “Mr. O’Leary, do you have any
idea as to who—who has done this?”
His face sobered instantly.
“No,” he said simply. “Will you help me find out?”
“Yes.” I spoke very thoughtfully. “It is only right and just to do
so.”
“Thank you.” He seemed sincere. “You may be interested to know that
you have helped me already.”
“Helped you! How? There was nothing I told you——”
“I’ll see you again, Miss Keate. By the way, I am leaving one or two
policemen about to-night. It may help to steady some of the nerves in
St. Ann’s.” He opened the door and before I knew it I was in the main
hall with my question still unanswered.
I still felt ill and weak from shock, and it was fortunate that the
exigencies of the situation demanded action. That was the only saving
feature of these fearful days; we were all so busy that we had little
time for brooding.
The news could not be kept from the nursing staff, of course, though I
hoped that we could keep it from the patients, many of whom had been
directly under Dr. Letheny’s care. And there was Corole—in common
decency I must go to her.
I snatched somebody’s slicker from the rack near the main door and
turned into the corridor leading to the south wing, intending to slip
out the south door and along the path to Corole’s cottage, it being
much closer that way.
In the corridor I met Dr. Balman.
“I have heard,” I said briefly. “I am going to see Corole.”
He nodded.
“At the request of the Board of Directors I shall take Dr. Letheny’s
place—temporarily at least. I have just called a meeting of the whole
nursing staff, Miss Keate. You were with Mr. O’Leary so I did not
disturb you. I told them of the situation, gave orders that this thing
must not get to the ears of the patients, suspended training classes
for a few days, and doubled the number of girls on duty in the various
wings and wards until we get a working routine established. I find
that the girls are nervous over being alone.” He spoke very calmly,
but his extreme pallor caught my eye.
“You had better get some rest, Dr. Balman. And have that bruise on
your cheek attended to—it looks bad.”
He passed his hand over the bruise.
“I bumped it while running through the apple orchard last night. I
wasted no time after I talked to Miss Day over the telephone.”
“Oh—then you came by the side road?”
“Yes. Thought I’d save time by not going around by the main entrance.
I didn’t expect this.” He fingered the spot cautiously.
“Put iodine on it,” I advised.
“I’ll sleep here in the hospital for a while,” he said. “I’ll be there
on the couch in the inner office. So if there is anything wanted I
shall be right here.”
I nodded approvingly and went on, but while hurrying through the
corridor I became conscious of something about the casual sentences
that affected me disagreeably. What was it? Ah! “I bumped it while
running through the apple orchard.” To be sure he had followed the
words immediately with a very reasonable explanation, but wasn’t that
in itself suspicious! On the other hand, however, I had been quite
sure that the man with whom I collided had been Jim Gainsay.
Well, there was no way to make sure. And I resolved that I must not
allow myself to become suspicious of anything and everything. The
affair was strain enough on one’s nerves as it was, without adding the
horror of suspecting one’s nearest associates.
Immersed in my own not too pleasant thoughts I passed the door of Room
18 without seeing it, an occurrence that I was to find unusual. On the
porch stood a policeman, his broad back to the door, but he made no
effort to stop me when I descended the steps. Once in the path the
trees dripped steadily on my head, the wind blew the light slicker so
that it was difficult to hold it around me, and I bent my head and ran
through the damp welter of leaves and small sticks, with the branches
of the trees sweeping so low as to brush my hair and cap, and the
shrubbery reaching out thorny twigs to clutch at my white skirt. It
was shadowy there in the orchard and the hospital soon disappeared
behind the intervening shrubbery and trees and gray mist. It was
nearing five o’clock by that time and already growing dark so that the
path was not an altogether agreeable place in which to linger.
I turned another little bend that sloped rapidly down to the bridge
and almost ran into a tall figure that was leaning upon the railing.
At my startled exclamation it turned to face me. It was Jim Gainsay, a
sodden hat pulled low over his eyes and the collar of his capacious
tweed coat turned up. He was smoking (it was a pipe I noted, thinking
of the cigarette case) and casting pebbles across the water, which is
not a rainy day pastime.
“Oh. It’s you.” I said.
“Miss Keate! Say, you are the very person I’ve been wanting to see.
Can you tell me something of poor old Louis?”
“Louis? Oh, you mean Dr. Letheny.” I suppose I paled a little at the
name. At any rate Gainsay glanced sharply at me.
“I didn’t mean to—disturb you,” he said apologetically. “You see, I
only heard of it an hour or so ago, and only what that fellow O’Leary
told me. Don’t talk if you would rather not.”
“Then I know no more than you, for the detective, Mr. O’Leary, told me
of it, too. Of course, it was a shock.”
Jim Gainsay nodded, his gaze again on the little stream that, swollen
by the night’s rain, swept in a bubbling current almost to our feet.
“Poor old Louis,” he muttered.
“You have known him a long time?” I said absently, my eyes too on the
water.
“Since university days,” said Jim Gainsay slowly. “I always liked
Louis though I can’t say I understood him; no one ever did. In the
last few years I have seen him only a few times. It was terrible to—go
like that. Do they have any idea as to who—who killed him?”
“Not that I know of,” I said and shivered at the thought of the black
night so recently past and of the unknown and ghastly presence that
Room 18 had held. And I had taken that futile little candle and
searched the room for the thing that some sixth sense warned me was
there! I shivered again and caught my breath and Jim Gainsay turned to
me again.
“Don’t let me keep you out here in the storm. You are cold in that
slicker thing.”
“A little. I am going to see Corole. How does she take it?”
Jim Gainsay’s frown deepened.
“I hardly know. I can’t understand her any better than I could
understand Louis. She looked—sort of bad—this morning. Tired, you
know. And kept saying Louis would return. But she was terribly
nervous. Prowled over the house like a cat.” He shrugged in distaste.
“Fairly gave me the creeps to watch her. Then when they came up to the
house to tell her that—that they had found him she just sort of froze
all up. Hardly said a word.”
“Wasn’t she dreadfully shocked?”
“Well—I don’t know. You never can tell how Corole is feeling or what
she is thinking about. Of course, she and Louis sort of got on each
other’s nerves a little. That is—you know what I mean——” He glanced at
me uncertainly.
“I know.”
“I suppose St. Ann’s is awfully upset?”
“We are trying to keep everything going as well as possible. It is a
bad situation, naturally. The nurses are doing their best but there is
a sort of undercurrent of hysteria.” My mind on Corole, I did not
immediately note where his inquiries were leading.
“Miss Day was with you in the south wing last night, was she not?” He
knocked his pipe carefully against the railing.
“Yes.”
“How—er—— Is she feeling any bad effects from the fright?”
“I have seen her only for a few moments at lunch,” I replied; at
another time I should have smiled at his elaborately impersonal air.
“I—don’t suppose I could see her? For a little while?”
“She will be free between six and seven o’clock. But we are allowing
no visitors for a few days . . .” My voice trailed doubtfully into
space.
“But see here, Miss Keate, I—it is important that I see her.” He spoke
rather defiantly as if he dared me to ask why. “Will you carry a note
to her, then?”
Well, I was willing to carry a note to Maida, so I shivered under the
folds of the flapping slicker while he stood with his back to the rain
and wind, scribbling hastily on a bit of yellowish paper he pulled
from his pocket. He held the paper close to him to protect it from the
rain but I noted that it was an unused Western Union telegraph blank.
“There, and thank you, Miss Keate.” He handed me the folded scrap of
paper and I slipped it into my pocket.
But at the end of the bridge I turned.
“Why, Mr. Gainsay,” I exclaimed. “I had forgotten. You were to leave
this morning!”
His face had lost the youthful look with which he had begged me to
take the note to Maida, and had become lined again, and his narrowed
eyes were unfathomable under that shadowy hat brim.
“I shall not go for a few days,” he said after a barely perceptible
pause. “I can scarcely leave at such a time. Louis was a friend. They
have no relatives here. Corole needs someone.”
His disjointed explanation did not please me. I restrained a rather
obvious remark as to chaperonage; after all, Huldah was a militant and
vigorous enough chaperon to suit the most meticulous Mrs. Grundy.
I daresay, however, that my disapproval was apparent in my expression,
for Jim Gainsay added hastily:
“My boat doesn’t sail till next week.”
“Your boat?”
“I’m to sail on the _Tuscania_.”
“Oh,” I said flatly, and there being nothing further I took my way on
around the hill.
The Letheny cottage looked cold and grim as I approached it. Puddles
stood along the turf path; the flowers were beaten down by the wind
and leaves had blown all over the porch. Huldah answered the bell, her
eyes red and swollen and the cap that Corole had forced her to adopt
hanging dejectedly over one ear.
“Miss Keate!” she cried. “And so wet!” She took my slicker, holding it
so it could not drip on the rug. “Oh, Miss Keate! Such a t’ing! Such a
t’ing!” It is only when Huldah is tremendously moved that she forgets
her digraphs.
“Yes, it is dreadful, Huldah,” I said. “How is Miss Corole?”
Huldah shrugged her heavy shoulders oddly.
“There she is, in the study.” She motioned toward the door without
answering my question and then followed me, her china-blue eyes
curious and round like a rabbit’s between their pink rims.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Corole with not very flattering indifference.
“For Heaven’s sake, Huldah, take that wet coat to the kitchen. And
close the door behind you,” she added viciously. “I suppose you came
to offer sympathy,” she went on, moving a pillow to a more comfortable
position under her arm. She was half-lying, half-sitting on the big
davenport. A fire had been built in the fireplace but had burned down
to a few sullen ashes with a red gleam here and there. There was no
light in the room beyond the gray, rainy dusk from the windows.
Corole’s hair was disarranged a little from its usual flat gold waves,
and her eyes had great dark circles under them, and her face in the
ghostly gray light was sallow and drawn. But she was gowned in a
coppery-green silk thing that clung smoothly to her rather luxuriant
curves. A heavily embroidered Chinese scarf, whose usual place, I
recalled, was on the long table near her, had been flung over her feet
and somehow, I presume because she glanced obliquely at it and reached
surreptitiously to rearrange it, I got the impression that she had
hastily flung it over her feet as I came into the room.
“Yes,” I replied gravely. “I am very sorry that this thing has
happened.”
“Oh, of course, it is terrible,” she agreed quickly. “The whole thing
is simply unspeakable.”
There was little for us to say; I offered the usual remarks; Corole
told me that Dr. Letheny’s body would be sent to New Orleans for
burial with others of the family and thanked me perfunctorily for my
offers of assistance.
“Jim Gainsay is staying on for a few days,” she said. “Nice of him but
I really don’t see what he can do.” There was a faint ring of
resentment in her voice that surprised me. Corole was not a woman to
resent masculine company.
“I suppose Huldah is making you comfortable?” I said for lack of
something better.
“Oh, yes,” replied Corole discontentedly. “She does as well as usual.
She was awfully upset about all this. Jumps every time I speak to
her.”
“Would you like someone to come and stay with you for a few days?”
“No,” said Corole sharply. “No. Why should I?”
“Oh—in case of anything—er—happening. I should think you would be a
little nervous.” My explanation sounded somewhat lame and I recalled
that Corole actually had no idea of the things we had gone through
last night. . . . A swift recollection of that shallow, locked closet
in Room 18 came to me and I arose suddenly, moved to another chair,
and tried to think of something else.
“. . . not that Huldah would be any good if something did happen,”
Corole was saying. “She would simply pull the covers over her head and
shriek. But there’s Jim.” She added the last name grudgingly as if to
say, “such as he is,” and lapsed into silence.
“I must get back to the hospital,” I said presently, not seeing that
my presence was vital to Corole.
“I don’t suppose they have any idea as to what happened to the
radium,” she observed casually as I arose.
“No. I don’t know what to think.”
“It would seem natural to believe that whoever killed Mr. Jackson
and—er—Louis—did so in order to get the radium.”
“So it would seem,” I agreed. “For my part, I have not had time to
speculate on possibilities. It is—too shocking.”
“Don’t you think that they will try to trace the radium?”
“I don’t think anything about it,” I replied caustically. Her interest
in the radium annoyed me. I felt repelled at her callous lack of
grief. Suppose she and Dr. Letheny had not been on the best of terms,
nevertheless they were cousins and housemates.
“Well,” she kept on, “it all seems very strange. Didn’t you see or
hear a thing while all that was going on?” Her catlike eyes, whose
pupils shone large and flat and black in the semi-twilight, flickered
over me with interest.
“No,” I said shortly. I did not relish being questioned by Corole
Letheny. “If there is nothing I can do for you I am going.”
“No need to be in a hurry,” she said indolently, yawning a little as
she moved with a luxuriant stretching of muscles to a more comfortable
position among the cushions.
“Good-night,” I said curtly. “And do have some light!” As I spoke I
reached abruptly for the lamp cord, pulled it, and the green light
fell on the davenport.
Corole sprang upright with a startled half word, clutched the Chinese
scarf and pulled it more securely over her feet.
“Good-night,” I said again and left.
Huldah was waiting in the hall. As I took my coat it seemed to me that
there was something hesitant in her attitude, as if she wanted to
speak to me, but I was in a hurry and furthermore in no mood to
condole with her. So I threw the slicker over my shoulders and
splashed along the sodden path.
I scarcely noticed the rain, however, nor the cold discomforts of the
path. When I entered the south wing and slipped quietly along its
hushed length, I was still rotating in my mind a certain question.
When the light had flashed on there in Dr. Letheny’s study, I had
caught a brief but distinct view of Corole’s slippers. They were
beautiful pumps, high-heeled bronze kid with dainty, cut-steel
buckles. But they were mud-stained and sodden with moisture and had
wet leafmold clinging to them.
Where had Corole Letheny gone that afternoon? What errand had been so
urgent that she had gone out of the house through the rain and storm
in such haste that she had not had time to remove those dainty
slippers?
Facing my own white, tired face in the mirror, I pushed my loosened
hair together, removed little torn pieces of leaves from it and
righted my cap. My shoes were soaked, so I changed them. Premonitory
pangs of neuralgia began to shoot over my left temple, and I wished
that I had not stood so long in the rain talking to Jim Gainsay.
With the thought came memory of the note with which I had been
intrusted and I planned to give it to Maida at dinner; the bell was
just ringing for the meal, then.
In my abstraction I had worn the borrowed slicker to my room; as I
started down to the dining room I threw it over my arm. Idly wondering
whose coat I had appropriated I ran my hand into a pocket, drawing out
a man’s handkerchief. It was large and white and had no distinguishing
marks on it. But there was a faint scent—I pressed the square of linen
to my nose, sniffed—and sniffed again with quickened interest. Faint
but unmistakable, the scent of ether emanated from its folds.
I stopped midway on the stairs, stared at the thing and deliberately
went through the other pockets. There was nothing more to be found; no
identifying label or initials on the whole garment.
One yellow slicker is very much like another, and search though I did
I found no means of discovering its owner. I felt, however, that I
should like to have the ether smell clinging to that handkerchief
explained. Possibly if I returned it to the rack and watched to see
who came for it I should learn, at least, the identity of its owner.
Thinking that no one would call for it during the dinner hour, the
quietest time of the whole day, I replaced the handkerchief and hung
the slicker on the hook from which I had taken it, and went down to
dinner. But when I returned some fifteen minutes later, after hurrying
over my dinner, the slicker was gone and I had not the faintest idea
as to who had removed it.
I gave the note from Jim Gainsay to Maida when I met her in the hall
outside the dining room and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing her
crimson vividly as she read it. The crimson, however, was succeeded by
a pallor that went to her lips as she finished reading the few
sentences, and during the meal she kept her eyes steadfastly on her
plate and ate practically nothing. And shortly after dinner, happening
to be standing near an east window, I saw a slim, shadowy figure,
crowned in a white cap, winding its way into the apple orchard.
Something after seven o’clock, when I was catching forty winks in my
own room, Maida came in. The soft frame of black hair around her face
had little beads of mist caught in it and I did not doubt that Jim
Gainsay had succeeded in seeing her.
She did not mention him, however, but fussed around the room for a
while, playing with the manicure things I had left on the
dressing-table top, flipping through the leaves of the last _Surgical
News_, and generally behaving as a woman does whose thoughts are
elsewhere. She even picked up my tool kit, commenting on the curved
bandage scissors and shining forceps and playing idly with the tiny
plunger of my own hypodermic set.
We said nothing of the affair of the previous night; it was too
recent, its developments too terrifying; we were both, I suppose,
unconsciously fortifying ourselves against the ordeal of the coming
second watch, which the memory of the last was not calculated to make
easier.
Maida had two crimson spots on her cheeks—from the walk in the rain, I
judged—but her eyes had slender purple shadows under them, her hands,
usually so steady, fluttered a little over the tools she was
fingering, she either spoke too rapidly of some trivial matter or
lapsed into silence, and when someone passing coughed suddenly Maida
started visibly, the pupils of her eyes darkened swiftly, and she cast
a quick, apprehensive glance over her shoulder toward the door.
But since it was only to be expected that we both show the strain of
the last twenty-four hours, I thought nothing of her evident
uneasiness.
She had not been in the room more than half an hour when I was called
to the third-floor telephone. The connection was poor and it took a
few moments to find that it was Miss Neil who was wanted, and when I
returned to my own room Maida had gone and I did not see her again
until we met in the south wing at twelve o’clock.
Contrary to our unacknowledged apprehensions, second watch that night
went much the same as on other nights. The electric lights had finally
been repaired, though the utmost illumination was little enough to
suit my taste. Just in front of the south door a policeman, tipped
perilously back in his chair, slumbered spasmodically and I must say
that, though he was no beauty, he was a most agreeable sight.
Fortunately for our piece of mind, it was a busy night. We actually
needed the extra help, Olma Flynn and a student nurse, and the two
extra uniforms, here and there about the wing, made it seem a little
less silent and ghostly.
Along about two o’clock Sonny’s light went on and I answered it.
“Why, hello, Miss Keate,” he said, as I turned on the light above his
bed. “You haven’t been in to see me since last night.”
Was it only last night?
“I’ve been busy, Sonny,” I replied. “How is the cast doing?”
“It was pretty bad last night.” He moved a little to ease his tired
body. “It is better to-night, though. Quite a lot more comfortable.
What happened last night, Miss Keate? I heard somebody scream.”
“One of the girls had a little fright.” I made my explanation casually
but Sonny’s gaze remained puzzled.
“To-day has been so queer, too. So many people in and out and strange
footsteps past the door. And this afternoon, about two o’clock, they
shut all the doors and I heard the wheels of a truck being taken along
the corridor. Did—did one of the patients die, Miss Keate?”
When I can’t tell the truth I made it a rule to tell as near the truth
as possible.
“One of the patients died, Sonny. He was an old gentleman.”
“Oh,” said Sonny, eyeing me doubtfully. I reached over to straighten
his sheets. Through long hours of suffering, of lying helpless in bed
and being at times rather nearer the other world than this, Sonny has
developed a highly sensitive intuition.
“Oh,” he said again. He was not satisfied but had good manners. “Did
you have a nice time at the party?” he asked cheerfully.
“At the party—— Why, no, Sonny. It—er—wasn’t a very nice party. It was
too hot.”
“I guess Miss Day didn’t get time to come in and tell me about it. I
looked for her. But she must have been too busy.”
“But I thought——” I checked myself abruptly, continuing: “Maybe she
will come in to see you to-night. What is it you wanted, Sonny?”
“Just a fresh drink, please. And would you change my pillows?”
I brought the fresh drink and made him as comfortable as possible.
So Maida had not been in to see Sonny last night after all! And she
had volunteered the information, I remembered; I had not even asked
for it. I deliberated over the matter for some time before I came to
the reluctant conclusion that only an affair of importance would have
brought Maida to the point of telling a deliberate lie. Which
conclusion did not lighten my state of mind.
The night didn’t go so well after that.
From midnight until four o’clock are the dreaded hours of St. Ann’s
régime. They are gray, cold, dreary hours—hours when pulses lag most
feebly, when the breath comes most wearily, when life seems a burden
that is all too easily escaped and the other world seems so near that
the nurse must cling to her patients with all her will to keep them
from making that quiet, easy journey. It is one of the demands of our
profession that the most is asked of our strength at a time when it is
at its lowest ebb.
Last night there had been two dead men in our wing—and dead by
another’s hands. Whose hand had it been?
Somehow during those black hours in that hushed and shadowy wing the
thing that struck me with the most horror, that brought my heart,
quivering, to my throat and gooseflesh all up my arms, was the memory
of that locked closet.
Dead men can’t walk. Dead men can’t carry keys. Dead men can’t lock
doors.
Who had locked that door? We _must_ believe that it was some intruder,
someone outside our little circle at St. Ann’s. And surely the police
had searched the place and that fearful intruder could not still be
about, hidden in some recess of the dark old halls and passageways.
And yet—who would be familiar with the plan of St. Ann’s? Who would
know that the radium was in use? Who, indeed, would know of its value?
Eleven’s signal light clicked and I hastened to answer, putting down
the chart at which I had been staring without even seeing its red
temperature line.
I found Eleven in a chill, which was followed, as I expected, by a
raging fever under which he grew steadily delirious. Dr. Balman’s
orders for the night had included an opiate if conditions warranted
it, so I went to the drug room.
The drug room is at the north end of the wing, directly opposite the
diet kitchen. We always keep there a small supply of drugs for which
we have frequent need. We do not keep the door locked as the drugs are
in small quantities. In the drug room, too, we keep the various tools
we are apt to need, among them a hypodermic syringe and a supply of
needles. During the week past the syringe belonging to the south wing
had got something wrong with its small plunger and Maida had brought
her own outfit down for us to use, which had reposed beside the broken
one in a drawer.
Pulling open this drawer I lifted the only syringe it contained and
found it to be the broken one. Maida must be using the other, I
reflected, and after waiting a few moments for her to return it I
started out to find her.
She was in the kitchen, preparing a malted milk.
“May I have the hypo?” I asked hurriedly.
“The hypodermic syringe?”
“Of course. I need it at once.”
“Isn’t it in the drug room?” She was measuring the cream-coloured
powder carefully.
“No. I thought you had it.”
“I haven’t used it to-night.” She did not look at me.
“I’ll see if Miss Flynn has it.” I turned quickly away. But Miss Flynn
did not have it, and had not had it. She hinted that I must have
overlooked it and even walked back to the drug room with me, pulling
out the drawer with her own hand.
“Why, there it is!” she exclaimed triumphantly.
And to be sure, there it was!
I was considerably chagrined, especially as Miss Flynn laughed and
said something not at all witty about my eyesight.
And in the very act of filling the thing I caught sight of something
that almost made me drop it. It was only a scratch across the bit of
nickel where the manufacturer’s name is engraved but it was a scratch
I myself had made in order to identify it. In a hospital it is easy to
get such things confused, so I had simply taken a pair of surgical
scissors and scratched across the letter “K” which appeared in the
manufacturer’s name, Kesselbach.
My own hypodermic syringe! How had it got there? Like a flash my mind
reverted to the memory of Maida, sitting on the edge of the window
sill, looking at my tool kit and taking this same tool in her
pink-tipped fingers.
I administered the hypodermic automatically, sterilized the needle and
replaced it, and returned to Eleven.
But in that darkened room, listening to the gradually less rapid
breathing of the sick man, and the still gusty wind and rain through
which a slow gray dawn was beginning to make itself felt, I found
myself possessed of new problems.