Under the Barberry Bush
I left rather abruptly. But on the darkening path toward St. Ann’s I
decided that Corole could not have heard our conversation. Feeling
that I must get these last two pieces of news, as well as the
occurrence of the previous night to O’Leary as soon as possible, I
walked rapidly along through the fog. I crossed the little bridge and
was hurrying through the apple orchard when I came face to face with
O’Leary.
“You are the very person I want to see, Miss Keate,” he said at once.
Taking my arm he drew me a few steps from the path; he motioned and
following his gesture I found I had a view of the south door and small
colonial porch.
“Tell me, Miss Keate, exactly where you were standing the night of
June seventh when the—er—arrow-like affair was thrown over your
shoulder?”
“I had truly forgotten that—I should have told you.”
“That’s all right,” he brushed my apology aside. “Can you recall about
where you were standing and the line it took over your shoulder?”
“I think so,” I replied slowly and thoughtfully. “It seems to me it
should have fallen somewhere about that clump of barberry. Over
there.” I pointed with my finger toward the shrubbery that edges the
apple orchard. “I suppose you are trying to find what it was.”
“If no one else has found—or retrieved it yet,” agreed O’Leary.
With O’Leary going ahead and holding back the more importunate
branches and shrubs, we made our slow way to the spot I had indicated.
I remember that we took some pains not to be seen from the hospital
and, bending over as I did, to keep my white cap invisible from those
windows, I had an absurd feeling that I was playing a grim game of
hide-and-seek. In the excitement of the search I did not notice my
soaked shoes and my wet hair, and remember only how I groped along the
sodden leaf mold, and around the slippery brown roots of the shrubs
and trees. If we had known what to look for, it would have been an
easier task, O’Leary informed me, after some twenty minutes’ vain
delving in the wet underbrush. He was inclined to be a little pettish
about it, implying that I might have noticed the thing more carefully.
That remark was made the time he slipped on some wet leaves and flung
his hands into a barberry bush to keep his balance. He looked
amazingly human and ordinary, picking out the thorns. It was just a
few moments after that that I heard him utter a sudden ejaculation of
pain. He was on the opposite side of a large clump of barberry bush
and I crawled cautiously around to discover what had happened.
I found him squatting on his heels, with his thumb in his mouth and
the other hand clasping a small object that, from his glance, seemed
to have pleased him inordinately.
“I’ve found it, Miss Keate,” he said, achieving triumphant utterance
in spite of the thumb. “Look! Could it have been this?”
It was a mercy I was so near the ground for my knees simply caved in
under me. In his hand was a small hypodermic syringe. The nickel on it
was rusted a little from the weather.
This syringe whizzing over my shoulder was exactly what I had seen. It
was heavy enough to acquire considerable velocity and, as I peered
through the shrubbery and trees to the porch, I knew that it would
have fallen about here. The trouble was that it looked very much like
the south wing’s missing syringe. Of course, all hypodermics are much
alike, but I knew a certain way that it could be identified, for Maida
had taken a cue from me and marked all her tools with a small
scratched “D.”
“Let me see it,” I said.
Without a word he handed the thing to me. On the top of the little
flat button was a rudely scratched “D,” rusty but still distinct.
“I see you recognize it,” said O’Leary, taking his thumb out of his
mouth, and regarding it as thoughtfully as if he had not another
object in the world. “It is Miss Day’s, is it not?”
I nodded.
“Everyone in the wing had access to it. The fact that it may have
originally belonged to Maida doesn’t mean that she threw it out here.”
“No—no, of course not,” he said contemplatively. “Well—we found it,
Miss Keate. Though I could wish that I had not run into it so
forcibly.”
He regarded the scratch on his thumb. “You don’t suppose that rust
harbored any tetanus germs?”
“It has bled enough by this time to clean itself,” I said without much
sympathy, feeling indeed that if he _would_ find things it served him
right to get stuck!
“You nurses!” he said, looked at me and laughed. “I wish you could see
yourself, Miss Keate.”
Conscious not only of my undignified posture but also of an increasing
dampness penetrating my skirts, I rose. He followed me through the
shrubbery toward the path.
“This is as secluded a place in which to talk as we can find, Miss
Keate,” he said. “Have you come upon any new developments that I’d
like to hear about?”
“How did you know I had?” I asked, not any too pleasantly.
He smiled. “By the look in your eyes and your general aspect
of—er—having swallowed the canary, so to speak.”
“Well, as a matter of fact there is a thing or two.” As briefly as I
could, I told him of the gold sequin and of the fact that Corole had
last worn that gown the night of June seventh. I also told him that
she was an adept at the use of a hypodermic needle. And then, somewhat
reluctantly, and glancing rather nervously into the foggy shadows that
were increasing under the dripping trees about us, I told him of the
visitor to Room 18 of the previous night. He asked several questions,
seeming to be extremely interested.
“It goes without saying that the person, whoever it was, who entered
Room 18 last night had some purpose. That there was—or is—something
yet in Eighteen that he wanted.” He frowned. “I don’t see what I could
have missed.”
“There was the sequin,” I suggested.
“Yes, there was the sequin. You said it was under the screen? Yes, I
missed that. But somehow I don’t see Corole Letheny coming back for
it.”
“She has likely not missed it—there are hundreds of the things on that
dress.”
“Huldah was positive she hadn’t worn the dress since Thursday night?
She might have left it there last night, you know.”
I shook my head.
“No. Huldah was sure. And it must have been then, for the side of the
sequin that lay uppermost is all tarnished from the rain.”
“That is true. Then the question is, Who was in Room 18 last night?
And what did he want?” His gray eyes were like two clear lakes.
“Miss Keate,” he said suddenly. “This radium: I’ve been hunting
through encyclopedias about the stuff, but there is something I want
to know. Could it be carried about in a pocket? Without burning, you
know.”
“Yes, if it were in the box made for it. Radium is used in a variety
of tools, for many purposes. But in this case it was in a sort of
boxlike container, quite small.”
“And could be carried in a pocket or in one’s hand?” he insisted. “Or
even hidden in one place or another?”
“Goodness, yes!” I replied. “I’ve seen tools containing it carried
about in doctors’ bags often enough.”
He did not speak for a moment or two, studying me in the meantime with
thoughtful eyes that did not in the least see me.
“I should think that it would be hard to dispose of—though as to
that——” He broke off abruptly. “Look here, Miss Keate, how is it that
such a valuable thing is used with so little precaution against
theft?”
“In some hospitals radium is guarded,” I explained. “There is one very
large hospital, to which patients come from all over the world, where
guards are placed in the sick-room whenever radium is used. But it was
not deemed necessary here at St. Ann’s. Nothing of the kind has ever
happened before and our class of patients is, as a rule, of the most
respectable. St. Ann’s, you know, has really the best standing——” I
stopped in the middle of my rather snooty remark as I saw the half
smile on his face.
“Still it did happen,” he said softly.
“Yes,” I retorted. “And it is your business to recover it.”
His face sobered instantly.
“Not an easy task, Miss Keate,” he said at once and most amiably. “And
I’m grateful for the help you give me. In return I shall tell you,
since you ask it, that there are a few possible premises that interest
me. You might give me your opinion of them. For one thing—we have
found that there were three possible means of death, in or about Room
18. There was a revolver, ether, and a hypodermic syringe and enough
morphine missing from the drug room to more than accomplish—what we
believe it did accomplish. Three weapons where only one was necessary!
Dr. Letheny met his death by a fourth means. Three weapons! Does that
not indicate that there was more than one person interested in your
patient’s death?”
“Three!” I gasped. “Three!” In consternation I went over the list of
names of that dinner party of ill memory. “But there were only six of
us at that dinner to whose personnel you limit your suspects.”
“Seven,” corrected O’Leary. “There is Dr. Letheny, you know.”
“But Mr. O’Leary, it sounds like a club.” I was very much in earnest
but the man had the impudence to laugh.
“It _does_ sound like an association of some kind,” he said coolly.
“The cuff link and the affair of the disappearing hypodermic needle
point to Maida. The presence and continued presence of Jim Gainsay,
plus that somewhat ambiguous wire, point to him. Possibility includes
you and the two doctors. And as to Miss Letheny, we have several
counts against her. So you see it does look rather like a conspiracy.”
“Nonsense,” I said irritably. “I assure you that all six of us did not
band together for the purpose of doing away with Dr. Letheny and his
patient.”
“Of course not,” agreed O’Leary soothingly. “Though you must admit,
Miss Keate, that there are a good many clues—no, we’ll call them
merely facts that intrigue the curious mind—that seem to include all
of you.”
“Coincidence,” I said with considerable decision.
O’Leary’s eyebrows went up a little.
“Have it as you will,” he agreed amicably.
“You have forgotten the fact that Fred Hajek’s coat was wet that night
when I finally aroused him. Why didn’t you inquire about that at the
inquest?”
“I had already done so,” said O’Leary. “He explained that the window
in his room was open and that the coat was lying across a chair beside
the window when the rain began. He did not waken immediately and it
rained on his coat.”
“H’m,” said I skeptically. “How about Dr. Balman? Are you going
to take his word for it that he was in his own apartment during the
time all this took place? What about that bruise on his face that he
said he got running through the orchard? Mightn’t he have got it
earlier in the night?” Though my heart reproved me as I spoke, for
Dr. Balman, torn from his beloved studies, forced into a thousand
responsibilities, worn and haggard and tired and troubled, was a
pathetic figure.
“Dr. Balman is too busy a man these days to bother much with
questions,” said O’Leary simply. “However, since you have inquired, I
have proved his statement. According to the elevator man at the
apartment house in which Dr. Balman lives, Dr. Balman arrived from the
Letheny’s at twelve-fifteen and did not leave until the same elevator
man, who also attends the switchboard during the night, gave him a
call from St. Ann’s. The elevator man obligingly listened in to the
conversation, had the elevator at the door of Dr. Balman’s apartment
immediately, and took the doctor down to the first floor at exactly
three minutes after two.”
“Now then,” he continued after a short silence, “about this hypodermic
needle: I should like to have a little talk with Miss Day. And also I
want to visit Room 18 again.”
“There is a patient in Room 18.”
“Already!”
“Yes. I don’t think Dr. Balman, or Dr. Hajek either, wanted to permit
the room to be used, but there was no other place for the patient.”
O’Leary’s clear eyes considered me absently for a moment.
“It isn’t likely, then, that there will be a repetition of last
night’s affair,” he said finally. “But suppose you let me go over the
room again, when I can do so without disturbing the patient.”
A figure moving through the mist caught our eyes. It was Maida, her
white cap gleaming above her blue and scarlet cape.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Day,” said O’Leary, stepping into the path.
I think Maida was a little startled, for her eyes darkened and she
glanced hurriedly along the path toward the bridge.
But: “Good-afternoon, Mr. O’Leary,” she answered composedly enough.
“Oh, there you are, Sarah,” she went on as her eyes fell on me. “I was
wondering where you had gone.” Her eyes travelled to my hair, and she
exclaimed: “How wet your hair is! You’ll get neuralgia, won’t you?”
I put a hand to my hair. It was wet and very draggled where the
branches from the trees and shrubs under which I had crept had pulled
it. I straightened my wilted cap and tucked up the more adventurously
straying locks.
“I’ve been looking for something.”
“I think you must have been,” agreed Maida, a flicker of mirth in her
blue gaze. “You must have looked for it under the barberry bushes.”
As a matter of fact I had done just that. But before I could say
anything O’Leary took up the conversation.
“Did you lose your hypodermic needle, Miss Day?” he asked without
prelude.
Maida’s face sobered instantly and she glanced swiftly at him.
“Why, yes, I did lose it,” she said immediately.
“Is this the one you lost?” he asked, holding the syringe toward her
in his outstretched palm and keeping his extraordinarily clear eyes on
her face so keenly as almost to read her thoughts.
So I am sure he saw her lips tighten, as I did, and her chin go up
defiantly.
“It seems to be,” she said. “I had scratched my initial on mine.” She
reached for the syringe and turned it so she could see the small
plunger with its marked top.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That is my own syringe.”
“I found it just now in a clump of bushes. Do you know how it got
there?”
“No,” said Maida flatly.
“Why, then,” said O’Leary very softly, “did you replace it with Miss
Keate’s needle?”
Maida turned toward me at that, her eyes again unfathomable. But
before she could reply Jim Gainsay, whose approach we had not noted,
swept impetuously between us.
“Hello, Miss Keate—O’Leary. Here you are, Miss Day.” And without any
ado about it, he simply took Maida’s arm and hustled her away from us
and along the narrow path toward the bridge before we had time to
blink.
It was rather astonishing, and O’Leary and I stood there in silence
for a moment until the fog hid the gleam of scarlet from Maida’s cape.
“Well,” remarked O’Leary then, turning to me; I saw that his eyes were
twinkling with a sort of unwilling admiration that was half amusement.
“Well—somewhat piratical is Mr. Gainsay. I suppose he brazenly
listened to what we said. It is evident that he did not want Miss Day
to answer my last question—also, that he is more or less in her
confidence and that he was meeting her by appointment. Or”—he paused
for a moment—“or it might be that he has reasons of his own for not
wishing it to be known just why Miss Day substituted your needle for
her own. At least,” he concluded briskly, “he knows more than an
innocent man should know.”
And with that I had to be content, for he would not say another word
and we walked silently along the dusky path until we came to the
colonial porch of the south wing.
“I’ll go on around to the main entrance,” said O’Leary, then. “I want
to use the telephone in the general office. I’ll be around to your
wing later; there is something about Room 18 that I must know.” He
took off his cap as he walked away from me—a nice gesture that was
somewhat marred in effect by his very dirty hands.