The Disappearing Key and Part of an Inquest
“Yes, I saw that this morning,” said a quiet voice beside me. It was
Lance O’Leary; I did not know he was near until he spoke. “Our friend
Mr. Gainsay seems to be a little confused as to his dates.”
I daresay my eyes reflected a question for he added, leisurely:
“He told me that he intended to sail on the _Tuscania_ next week. I
see that he told you the same thing. He is not a very discreet young
man, else he’d have known that I should look up the _Tuscania’s_
sailing date without delay.”
I sighed; all those unpleasant little doubts of Jim Gainsay were
returning in full force.
“If he has the radium, it is not in his room in the Letheny cottage,”
said O’Leary meditatively.
“How do you know?” I inquired stupidly.
“We have searched the rooms and personal belongings of each of those
present at that dinner party last Thursday night.”
“What!”
“In fact, I daresay that there is not a room in the whole of St.
Ann’s, as well as in the Letheny cottage, that has not been thoroughly
ransacked.”
I ran my tongue over dry lips. This was getting down to work with a
vengeance.
“Why?” I stammered.
There was a glimmer of impatience in his eyes.
“For the radium, of course. Surely you did not think we were going to
let it get away from us without a struggle.”
There was a moment or two of silence during which I studied the
polished glass surface of the desk before me without seeing it.
“Did you ask Huldah about Miss Letheny’s errand through the rain last
Friday afternoon?” inquired O’Leary after a contemplative pause.
“Yes.” I told him in a few words the little that Huldah had told me.
“And there is something else I have discovered,” I went on miserably.
“I’ve got to tell you, though I must say I do not want to do so. It
is—that morphine. The morphine that killed Mr. Jackson, you know. I—I
know where it came from!”
“You—what!” O’Leary was for once startled out of his usual composure.
“I know where it came from,” I repeated reluctantly. “At least, I
think that I do. You see,—there is morphine missing from our south
wing drug supply.”
I had to tell him the whole thing, of course, under his searching
questions and no less searching gaze, and even explain our system of
keeping account of the drugs. He had to see the drug room and the
charts and the records for himself. It was while I was showing him the
drawer in which the morphine was kept, that I made my regrettable slip
about the hypodermic syringe.
I had started to show him how the needles were fitted into the small
mechanism, and I reached for a hypodermic syringe. It turned out to be
my own.
“This one is mine,” I said thoughtlessly, fitting the slim, hollow
needle into the tiny instrument. “The other one that we were using
disapp——” I stopped so suddenly that my breath came out in an
explosive little pop and O’Leary’s face hardened slightly. It was an
expression that I was growing to recognize.
“You may as well finish. So the other one ‘disapp’-eared, did it? When
and how? Whose was it? There is still one in the drawer. What about
the one that disappeared?”
“I don’t know,” I said flatly. “Then, you see, we take the sterile
water and measure the liquid into——”
O’Leary looked at his watch.
“I haven’t much time,” he said pleasantly. “But I have enough time to
wait right here until you tell me about the hypodermic syringe that
disappeared. Or if necessary I can dog your footsteps the rest of the
night, reiterating my question at frequent and embarrassing intervals.
Of course, I can have the whole hospital searched extensively and
every hypodermic needle accounted for, especially if missing. I can
follow you to your meal—isn’t that the bell?—and keep on asking you.”
He added meditatively: “I suppose it might cause considerable interest
among the other nurses.”
I regarded him furiously. The thing was that he would be quite capable
of doing just that. I began to understand the force of the words of
the chief of police when he had said—“Once Lance O’Leary gets his
teeth into anything, it is as good as done.”
“I suppose you’ll have to know sometime, anyway,” I said sulkily.
The flicker in his gray eyes was like a ripple across a very calm,
deep lake.
“You are right, Miss Keate. So why not tell me now?”
Well, to make a long story short, I told him of the missing
hypodermic, which after all, was little enough: barely the fact that
Maida’s syringe had been removed and my own substituted, but this
without my knowledge. And that Maida had had the opportunity to take
my own, and if she had wished to use it, all that she needed to do was
ask me for it.
“Which she conspicuously did not do,” commented O’Leary. “Oh, by the
way, Miss Keate, have you ever attended an inquest?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t get bothered. Our coroner is a decent old fellow but he
does love to be pompous. Just answer what he asks, tell your story as
briefly as possible and don’t—er—volunteer anything. You see there are
some things that you and I know that will not come up at the inquest.”
“You mean—they would warn the guilty one?”
He nodded briefly as he turned away.
Maida was already in the south wing when I rounded the right angle of
the corridor leading from the main office, at exactly twelve o’clock
that night.
“I locked the south door,” she said, hanging the key on its customary
nail above the desk.
“That was right,” I approved, glancing over the charts. It appeared
that Eleven’s digestive apparatus was still doing business at the old
stand, so to speak, but otherwise all was well and I settled briskly
into the business of second watch.
Midnight temperatures had scarcely been taken, however, when Olma
Flynn developed a sick headache, worse when I was within hearing
distance, and had to be excused from duty. We didn’t actually need the
extra help, as Maida and I had been accustomed to care for the whole
wing ourselves, but nevertheless it was a little annoying, especially
as, about two o’clock, the little student nurse burned her wrist over
the gas flame in the diet kitchen, and the burn had to be salved
extensively and the nurse sent to bed with an aspirin tablet.
Thus Maida and I found ourselves alone in the south wing for the first
time since those terrifying events of Thursday night. This precarious
situation was a matter that was, I think, predominant in our thoughts
but neither of us mentioned it; we even manufactured an artificial
sort of—not gaiety, that would be asking too much—but of brisk
attention to work and a determined avoidance of conversation that
might lead back to things we were anxious to forget.
All went well, in spite of our hidden fears, until about three
o’clock. I was pouring out a small dose of bromide for Three, who had
made up her mind not to sleep that night and naturally was not doing
so, when Maida opened the door of the drug room.
Her face was so ghastly white that at first glimpse of it my hand
began to tremble and the medicine poured all over the spoon. Blindly I
set the bottle down.
“What is it?”
“There’s something in Room 18!” she gasped through ashy lips.
“Room 18!”
“Just now—I saw something go into that room from the corridor!”
“Someone—is sleep-walking.” I grasped at the first rationality that
presented itself.
After the light in the diet kitchen the long corridor seemed
peculiarly dark and shadowy and the green light over the chart desk
was miles away. It never occurred to me to call for help, and we sped
along toward that dark end of the wing that we had good cause to fear.
But we stopped stock still as we came close enough to see the door of
Room 18, and a cold shiver crept up from my back.
The door of Room 18 was standing wide open!
It had not been opened, so far as I knew, since the police had left
that room. It had been shunned by all the nurses. Who had opened it?
Who would dare open it?
Who was inside that dark place?
A long, shuddering sigh came from Maida beside me and I felt her cold
hand grip my wrist. The contact nerved me and I did what, I afterward
realized, was a very foolish thing.
I took a few steps forward, advanced to the very door of that grisly
room, reached a shaking arm through the open doorway, groped for the
electric-light button, found and pressed it.
The cold white dome on the ceiling flooded the room with light.
There was nothing out of the way to be seen. There were the plain
dresser, the bedside table, two chairs, the folded burlap screen and
the high, narrow bed—nothing else. Something caught in my throat as I
glanced at the bed and toward the closet doors.
“The—closet——” breathed Maida at my side. “Oh! You are not going to
open that!” as I took a more decisive step forward.
It was no easy thing to do, for I knew well that those shallow closets
were yet large enough to hold—what one of them had held.
They were both unlocked this time. And there was nothing in them!
I turned to Maida, whose white face had been beside me during the
ordeal. Without saying a word we retreated to the corridor.
“Are you sure you saw something?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“I am positive,” whispered Maida. “You see, I was just answering
Fourteen’s light, which brought me fairly near to Eighteen. I came out
the door and was starting down toward the chart desk when something—I
don’t know what—some rustle or sound, perhaps, made me turn around,
facing this way, so I could see the south door. And I was just in time
to see a sort of movement at the door of Eighteen.” Her hands went to
her throat as she spoke and I did not feel very comfortable myself.
“It couldn’t have been one of the patients?” I murmured.
“No! There isn’t a one of them who is able to walk.”
“Then who——”
“Or—_what_——” said Maida.
A remnant of common sense saved me, I think, from stark terror. I took
a firmer hold on my imagination.
“Nonsense,” I spoke decidedly but still, for some reason, in a
whisper. “There are no such things as—as—— I mean to say, the shadow
you saw was either an optical illusion or a living, breathing person.”
“Certainly,” agreed Maida, adding inconsistently: “I don’t see how a
living person could have got past us, through this long corridor
without one of us seeing him—_it_.”
My eyes fell on the south door near at hand; the tiny panes of glass
winked blackly at me as I crossed to it, grasped the brass latch and
pulled. The door swung slowly open, letting in a current of cold,
mist-laden air.
“There, you see?” I said to Maida. “Only a real, material thing needs
a door to go through.”
Maida was looking at me strangely.
“I don’t see that that helps matters any,” she said. “I locked that
door myself, to-night. It just proves that someone was actually here.
That the murderer is still about the hospital.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, though my heart was pounding in my throat.
“You are sure you locked it?”
“Positive.”
“And you hung the key there on the nail above the chart desk?”
“Yes.”
We both swung hastily around. At the other end of the shadowy corridor
gleamed the green-shaded light over the desk. With one accord we
started toward it.
The key was not on the nail above the desk!
But even as our frightened gaze took in that amazing fact my eyes fell
on the glass top of the desk. There on its shining surface lay the
key. We stared at it for some time before our eyes met. Then I picked
up the key, my fingers seeming to shrink from the cold, clammy metal,
returned to the south door, locked it securely and put the key in my
pocket.
And as I did so, a thought struck me. The person who had got into the
wing by means of the south door must also have got out again. He
couldn’t have gone through the corridor and south door for Maida was,
by that time, in the hall.
The light was still glowing in Room 18, and I crossed the room, not
without a queer feeling in the region of my knees, as if they would
give way with me, without notice. Sure enough, the window was
unlocked; it was even open a fraction of an inch at the bottom, though
the screen, which has a spring snap, was closed.
I pushed the window the rest of the way down, locked it, not without
an unpleasant impression that something was out in that gleaming
darkness back of the window pane watching my every move, turned off
the light, and closed the door again. Maida was standing in the
corridor and we walked slowly toward the more cheerful region of the
chart desk and diet kitchen.
“I suppose,” she mused at length, “that someone could have taken the
key from the nail and returned it when we were in Room 18.”
“But who? It would have to be someone in St. Ann’s. And that is
unthinkable.”
“There are likely ways in and out of St. Ann’s,” she said finally, and
with that a signal clicked somewhere. I recalled Three who would be in
a tantrum by this time, and we separated.
We were very busy for the rest of the night, and dawn was never so
welcome a sight. But during those slow hours I came to the conclusion
that there were only two things we knew without doubt. The key to the
south door had been removed from the nail and left on top of the chart
desk, and the sinister door of Room 18 had been opened and left open.
Who had done this and why was a matter of conjecture, and I resolved
to say nothing of it save to Lance O’Leary. I should leave it to
O’Leary.
Leave it to O’Leary! I had so far recovered from my fright that I
smiled faintly at the phrase, but I could have embraced the day nurses
when they came on duty, and the rattle of the dishes in the small,
rubber-tired dumbwaiter, as it came up with the breakfast trays,
sounded like music to my ears.
On the way to the basement for breakfast, I had time for a word or two
with Maida.
“We’ll say nothing about it, save to O’Leary,” I murmured in a low
voice and she nodded, just as Miss Dotty joined us with one of her
insufferably bright good-mornings.
Miss Dotty keeps a book at her bedside, entitled _Every Day a Sunny
Day_, and memorizes verses from it. Her verse that morning was:
If you’re lonely, sad and blue,
Keep smiling.
Luck will bring you someone true
Who understands and loves just you.
Keep smiling,
which seemed not only inane but downright offensive, as coming from
one old maid to another.
The inquest was set for nine-thirty. We had an early operation and at
eight o’clock prompt I was tying Dr. Balman into his white apron and
hood and counting sponges in the operating room. The patient’s
appendix proving to be elusive, turning up, in fact, on entirely the
wrong side, the operation was more interesting than we had expected.
Dr. Balman looked haggard from fatigue and worry, his thin hair and
beard were dishevelled and his eyes were hollow, but his hands were
steady, if rather slow, and every last detail was thoroughly attended
to.
The inquest was held in the nurses’ library in the basement. It is not
a cheerful room, particularly on wet, rainy mornings. It was chilly in
the place; the white-washed walls looked cold and bare, even the
medical books along the walls had none too happy titles. The linoleum
rug caught dismal highlights, the chairs borrowed from the dining room
were slippery and uncomfortable, and moisture dripped steadily down
the small windows. Someone had turned on the lights but they did not
improve matters.
At a little table sat a stout, elderly gentleman, whom I had no
trouble identifying as the pompous coroner. He wore a pair of
nose-glasses attached to a button on his broad vest with an important
black ribbon. The board of directors were ranged near at hand, some of
them constituting the jury, which would have surprised me had I not
known the weight in politics and otherwise that some of those names
carried.
Corole Letheny was there in a soft brown frock daringly tailored and
very short so that her silk-clad—er—ankles and so forth were much in
evidence; she wore a small green hat pulled low over her eyes and
carried a large and gorgeously beaded bag which made a spot of vivid
colour in that neutral gray room. Huldah, very stiff in her Sunday
black silk, sat beside her.
A little way off among a group of nurses sat Maida, her beauty and the
distinctive air of breeding in the very lift of her chin making her
stand out from the others as if they were only the frame for a
picture. Jim Gainsay stood at the back of the room with a group of
reporters. He wore an air of ease that was a shade too deliberate; his
impenetrable eyes looked at nothing in particular but, I had no doubt,
missed not the smallest movement in the room. He was attractive,
clean, young, vigorous, but I could have wished him less
restrained—less poised—less wary.
There were the staff doctors, of course, talking to Dr. Balman and Dr.
Hajek. I was interested to note that a bit of Dr. Hajek’s ruddy colour
had deserted him; he said little and his black eyes darted here and
there about the room, occasionally lingering upon Corole. Save for
those restless eyes he was as unmoved and stolid as was usual with
him.
There were several policemen, too, Higgins, the cook and a few curious
student nurses sitting with Miss Dotty, who being something of a
simpleton took that occasion to shed a few tears, presumably for Dr.
Letheny. And there was O’Leary, of course, gray and quiet, sitting
near the coroner’s table.
It being the one and only inquest I had ever attended (for which I am
truly thankful), I was not able to compare it with others and did not
know whether the undercurrent of excitement, the low whispers, the
white faces, the nervous little movements and darting glances here and
there, are typical of all inquests or peculiar to that one.
All at once the coroner put down the papers he had been studying, took
off his nose glasses, and began to talk. I did not notice what he
said, for at the same moment O’Leary rose quietly and moved toward the
back of the room. As he passed me he dropped a small bit of folded
paper in my lap. Under the cover of my wide cuff I read the brief
message it contained. I read it again; it didn’t seem to make sense,
but of course, I was willing to obey the terse request. Just as I
slipped the paper into my pocket I heard my name being called and I
rose and walked to a chair indicated by the coroner.
After convincing the coroner and the jury that I was actually Sarah
Keate, superintendent of the south wing and on duty the night of
Thursday, June seventh, I was allowed to proceed.
It was not so difficult as I had feared it would be; I was allowed to
tell my story in a brief and straightforward manner. The only time I
became confused was when I got to the incident of the arrow-like
projectile that had whizzed over my shoulder while I stood for a
moment there on the little south porch. It was then, for the first
time since the night it occurred, that I recalled the trifling
incident, and I was already launched upon it and could not head off
the coroner’s questions. I caught a reproachful look from O’Leary but
had to continue; however, the coroner’s questions could prove nothing
for there was little I could tell of the matter.
The coroner questioned me rather particularly, too, as to the man with
whom I collided, but I had expected this and gave guarded replies. He
also tried to make me identify the owner of the cigarette case which
lay there on the table before him, but I refused to commit myself
beyond telling how and when I found the thing.
As I say, it was not difficult—that is, until I reached the actual
events leading to the crime. It was then that my voice faltered.
“It was while I was sitting there at the chart desk, at exactly
one-thirty—I had just entered the time on a chart—that I heard a sort
of—bang. It sounded like a door closing.” I went on speaking with more
and more difficulty. “So I got up and walked along the corridor but
the south door was still open. Then I went back to the chart desk and
was there when the storm broke and I had to run to close the door and
the windows. When I went into Room 18 to close the window I found——” I
stuck and had to clear my throat.—“I found that the patient, Mr.
Jackson, was dead. The lights had gone out but a flash of lightning
lit the room and I felt for his pulse and knew that he was dead. I ran
to the diet kitchen, found a candle, and ran back to Eighteen. Miss
Day had been closing the windows in the wing and had just got to Room
18 when I returned with the candle. It was after we knew we could do
nothing for him that we found the radium had been stolen.”
My testimony continued for some time after that, but I simply answered
the coroner’s questions as briefly as possible and volunteered
nothing, and presently resumed my seat, feeling that, with the one
exception, I had conducted myself creditably.
Then Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek were called in turn, to testify as to
the causes of death, first of Mr. Jackson’s, and later of Dr.
Letheny’s. They used technical terms, and told the methods of
determining the length of time each had been dead before discovery. It
was a difficult half hour for both of them, knowing Dr. Letheny as
they had, and they both looked quite exhausted when the coroner had
finished with them. Dr. Balman was frankly mopping his high forehead
and even Dr. Hajek’s stolidity was shaken, for his eyes darted
nervously about him and he retreated to the back of the room, where he
lit a cigarette with unsteady hands.
Then Miss Maida Day was called and as she took the witness chair my
hands gripped each other and I watched her with strained attention.
She testified very coolly, though. No, she had not seen Dr. Letheny
when he called to visit his patient at twelve-thirty. She had been
busy in one of the sick rooms. Yes, she had stepped out on the porch
for a breath of air. Yes, she had attended the dinner party given by
Miss Letheny. The coroner seemed to be supplied with all the topics of
conversation of that dinner and Maida agreed imperviously to every one
of them, even to the fact that she had said she wanted money.
“I believe your words were ‘I’d give my very soul for money’?”
inquired the coroner nastily.
“I think I did say something like that,” said Maida quietly, though a
tiny flush mounted to her cheeks. “Of course, I didn’t mean exactly
that. One often exaggerates one’s statements.”
The coroner did not comment on that but looked expressively at the
jury.
Then she corroborated, under his questions, every detail I had told of
our finding of the body of Mr. Jackson and of our subsequent actions.
He made his questions very searching and important indeed, and I felt
something between a fool and a liar during the process; I am not
accustomed to having my word doubted.
“Miss Letheny answered the telephone, when I called for the doctor,”
Maida explained, “and said that she couldn’t rouse him, and when I
said we must have him immediately she went away from the telephone and
when she came back told me that he was not in the house and she didn’t
know where he had gone.”
“Then you telephoned to Dr. Balman?”
“Yes.”
“Did he answer immediately?”
“No. I think he must have been asleep. When he did answer I told him
simply of Mr. Jackson’s unexpected death and that we could not locate
Dr. Letheny.”
“About how long was it until Dr. Balman arrived?”
“I’m not sure. I was—agitated naturally. But I should say about
fifteen minutes.”
“How was he dressed when he arrived?”
“In—a dinner jacket, I think—and slicker. It was raining, you know.”
“Miss Day, have you lately lost a cuff link?” asked the coroner,
without warning.
I was watching Maida closely and saw the little flush that had been in
her face drain steadily away; her eyes darkened but did not falter in
their steadfast gaze.
“Yes,” she replied quietly.
“Is this it?” He placed a small object in her hand that I could not
see but had no doubt was the square of lapis.
“It—seems to be,” she said, after a pause during which we others
scarcely breathed. “It resembles the one I lost.”
“Do you think you can say that it is your cuff link?” asked the
coroner smoothly.
“Why—yes. At least, it is identical with mine.”
“Can you explain its presence in Dr. Letheny’s coat pocket when he was
found—dead?”
“No,” said Maida steadily, her steel-blue eyes meeting the coroner’s
directly.
“When did you discover its loss?”
If possible, Maida went still whiter, and her nostrils took on a
pinched look.
“Shortly after I had returned from the porch,” she said steadily
enough, but her eyes went to the back of the room for a brief instant.
“How did this get into Dr. Letheny’s possession?” persisted the
coroner.
“I do not know. I suppose I—dropped it. Lost it from my cuff, and Dr.
Letheny must have—found it.”
“In the dark?” inquired the coroner suavely.
Maida flushed again but her chin went higher.
“I do not know.”
He continued to question her at some length but with no success, and
finally he dismissed her, with a grudging “Thank you.”
Corole Letheny was the next witness and I settled myself more
comfortably in my chair to listen. She was extremely self-possessed,
and sat down as gracefully as if she had been paying a call. She
looked rather nice, or would have, but for the clear beauty of the
face that had just preceded her. Maida’s immaculate uniform, her clear
white skin, her amazing blue eyes under their straight black eyebrows,
that little, aristocratic air which somehow always surrounded her,
made Corole seem a little tarnished, a little tawdry, a little
theatrical, in spite of her perfect grooming and her expensive
clothing.
By that time the repetition of the details of that oft-referred-to
dinner party were growing stale and I did not pay the strictest
attention to the first questions of the coroner. I was aroused,
though, by hearing him say suavely:
“You will pardon me, Miss Letheny, but were you and Dr. Letheny on the
best of terms?”
She stared at him, her yellowish eyes widening and reflecting green
lights from her hat brim.
“What do you mean?”
“Following the departure of your guests that night, did you not have a
heated disagreement?”
Her eyes slowly left the coroner and went to Huldah in an exceedingly
unpleasant gaze.
“I suppose my maid told you that. Yes, we did quarrel. Louis—was not
an easy man to get along with.”
“What was the subject of your quarrel that night?”
“About as usual. Nothing in particular.”
“Can you recall any of the exact—er—subjects?”
“Why—no,” said Corole slowly. “That is, he told me I was running the
house too extravagantly. He always said that.”
The coroner surveyed her for a moment or two.
“Is this your revolver?” he said suddenly, reaching for the shiny
revolver and holding it before her.
She started, quite visibly. One brown hand, with a great topaz shining
on it, reached out as if to clutch the thing, and then drew slowly
back.