Room 18 Again
Still feeling that I must get hold of Higgins, it was hard to compose
myself to rest and I didn’t sleep a wink. About eleven o’clock I got
up and made my way again to the basement. It was dark and spooky and
very empty down there and after knocking at Higgins’s door a few times
and feeling, while I waited for the reply that did not come, as if all
the ghosts in Christendom were prowling in the furnace room and
thereabouts, I retreated precipitously to my own room. I was sure that
Higgins was in his room, for where else would he be at that hour? But
the surroundings were not those to encourage persistence on my part.
The unused corridors are very desolate at that hour and those of the
sick-room wings little less so.
I was still wide awake when the twelve o’clock gong sounded.
By that time I was convinced that Higgins was deliberately keeping out
of my way and that in itself made me the more anxious to get in touch
with O’Leary. I stopped at the general office as I passed it on my way
to the south wing, and telephoned again.
The same servant answered my ring, sleepily at first, but he awoke in
a hurry when I told him that it was Miss Keate at St. Ann’s and that I
must speak to Mr. O’Leary at once.
“You might try the police station,” he said guardedly. “I think he was
investigating some telegraph messages that just came in.”
So I looked up the number in the telephone book and tried it. But
though I tried and tried, the line was busy and kept busy and I had to
give up in order to be on time at the south wing.
Olma Flynn was waiting for me and Maida already busy about
twelve-o’clock temperatures.
“Eleven is doing pretty well to-night,” said Olma as we bent over the
charts. “Three has a degree or so of fever but has been fairly quiet.
Oh, by the way, have you the key to the south door?”
“No.”
She frowned.
“I couldn’t find it. I had to leave the south door unlocked.”
“Couldn’t find it!”
“No. It wasn’t anywhere about the desk.”
“Did you look in the lock?”
“Of course, Miss Keate. And I asked the other girls. No one has seen
it since morning.”
In view of the existing circumstances, I suppose it was natural that I
should feel immediately alarmed. After Olma had gone wearily away to
bed I gave the chart desk and its vicinity a thorough search.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Maida, coming along just as I had
taken all the charts out of the rack and was feeling about with my
fingers in the recesses left empty.
“Looking for the key to the south door,” I replied. “Have you seen
it?”
“No. I have not seen it since last night.”
She waited for a moment, watching me rearrange the charts.
“I wish this trouble were all cleared up,” she said, her voice sombre.
“So do I.” I replaced the last chart and turned to face her. The
greenish light from above the desk made her face worn and colourless
and cast a sickly green glow over our white dresses.
“If we don’t find it to-morrow I shall have to have a new key made. I
suppose we can leave the south door unlocked to-night,” I decided
irresolutely. “I don’t like to; I have had enough of people prowling
through our wing.”
Maida’s shadowed eyes met mine and she shivered slightly; she
attempted to smile but her lips pulled tautly.
“It is getting to disturb me more and more,” she admitted. “Think of
this, Sarah: it has been only four days since that dinner party of
Corole’s. Is it possible! So much has happened. It seems like months.”
“This is Tuesday,” I calculated, “That was last Thursday night—no,
Maida, five days.”
“Well, five days then,” she assented lifelessly. “What a five days! If
it would only turn warm and summery and sunshiny again, I do believe
things would be better off. I’m sure I should be at least!”
“I dislike this constant drizzle,” I agreed, without much spirit.
“There is something honest and whole-hearted about real rain, but
weather like this is wretched.”
“Everything I touch is clammy like—like a dead man.” She whispered the
last words and I think they came as a surprise to her, for she looked
frightened and a little shocked.
A small red light shone down the corridor above a door and I started
to answer it.
“Don’t forget to—er——”
“Keep my eyes on the south door?” finished Maida with a bleak smile.
“Exactly.” I tried to smile, too. I remember thinking, as I walked
briskly toward the signal, that our words were not unlike those of
soldiers going into battle—in spirit, at least. I saw something of
that in 1918; I was in a hospital that was once, mistakenly I hope,
shelled. In a choice between the shelled hospital on that lurid front
and the dreary, clammy nights of second watch at St. Ann’s, where
every stir made your breath catch, and every whispering noise made
your skin crawl, I’d much prefer the shelled hospital. There the
terror was expected; its source was known. Here, every doorway was a
silent menace; every room and every turn and every alcove might
harbour death. The hospital seemed too roomy, too large, too dark. Our
very skirts seemed to whisper and hiss with fear along those blank
corridors and empty walls and half-lights and shadows.
I had left the door of the general office open and while going about
my work listened for the telephone. Dr. Hajek is supposed to answer it
at night, having his room off the office for that purpose, but I hoped
that if I heard the ring when O’Leary first called, I would be able to
get to the telephone by the time Fred Hajek, who is a heavy sleeper,
was aroused.
And when I finally heard the subdued buzz I happened to be at the
chart desk and simply dropped pen and all and ran through the corridor
that connects us with the main portion of the hospital.
I took the receiver off the hook and was panting so heavily that I had
to wait for a second to catch my breath before answering. The door to
Dr. Hajek’s room remained closed and Dr. Balman, in the inner office,
had not been aroused either, so I must have made the distance in
nothing flat—whatever that is—I picked up the term from a patient who
was interested in sports and believe it to mean a very rapid pace.
It was O’Leary, of course.
“This is Miss Keate,” I said in a low voice, hoping that the sound of
it would not carry past those closed doors. “I am very anxious to see
you.”
He must have caught the urgency in my voice.
“Shall I come right out?”
“Yes. At once.”
“Very well. In fifteen minutes.”
The receiver clicked, I hung up my own softly, straightened my cap and
walked back to the south wing. Maida was not to be seen. I sat down at
the desk and found that in my haste to get to the telephone I had
upset the red ink I was in the act of using. It was meandering gayly
across the desk, reddening everything it touched, and I seized some
trash out of the waste basket for a blotter. It was while I was
mopping up the ink that all at once, without even a warning flicker,
the light above the desk went out, leaving me in total darkness. It
was so unexpected that I gasped and cried out.
Then I turned as if to look down the corridor, but nothing but a close
black curtain met my eyes. There was not a gleam of light. Every
signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from
under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet. I was
suspended in a breathless black void.
And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been
violently done to death!
My breath began to come in painful, rasping gasps. I must do
something. I must find Maida. I must get a lamp. Must make my way to
the basement switch-box and replace a burned-out fuse—or find what had
caused the trouble.
Or was it an accident? Had a fuse actually gone? Could it be that the
lights had purposely been disconnected?
The terrifying question had not more than entered my head when from
somewhere down the corridor a cold current of air struck me.
I shivered. Some door or window had been opened. Some door—the south
door! Was it the south door?
I was standing, gripping the chair back, loath to leave that firm,
stationary thing and venture forth into the surrounding blackness that
was alive, now, with foreboding and the menace of unspeakable things.
Was something moving? Did I hear a stealthy footstep? Was it the
thudding of my own heart?
I strove to move, to force my horror-drugged muscles to advance that
length of grisly blackness toward—toward Room 18.
I tried to call out: “Maida—Maida—” I kept saying and finally realized
that my stiff lips were only shaping the words.
What was happening down there? Was Room 18 claiming another—— Was—— I
took a step into the darkness, tore my reluctant hands from the chair,
and groped for the wall to guide me past the yawning emptiness of
those intervening doors.
With outstretched, shaking hands, I was feeling for some stable thing
to guide me, when, in that dead silence, there was a shattering crash
of sound.
It was a revolver shot! The crash reverberated through the halls,
echoing and reëchoing in those empty spaces and about those blank
doors.
Then gradually the frightful echoes died away. The blackness pressed
in upon me, more suffocating than before, and again dead silence
reigned.
For a moment I must have been numb with shock. Then there were
footsteps running, a cry, the clicking of signal lights that did not
light, and I was running, stumbling, gasping, bumping into doors,
trying to reach the end of the corridor. And Room 18.
Along the way I collided with something, something moving that twisted
away from me and cried out. It was Maida and at my voice she answered.
“What is it! What has happened! Was it Room 18?”
“Room 18! What can we——”
“We must have a light. In the kitchen—there’s a candle——” I heard the
swift, soft thud of her feet as they moved away and I kept on, feeling
along the cold, dank wall, groping my way past open doors. It seemed
an eternity before I reached the end of the corridor and felt the
small panes of glass in the south door under my fingers. I turned
sharply to the left. Beyond that black void stretched Room 18. I
paused at its threshold but something drove me on, into the room.
Here was the wall. Here was the electric light button. Here the
bedside table. I bent, feeling along the rough weave of the
counterpane on the bed, took a few steps further, trod on something
hideously soft and yielding, and sprang backward in stark terror.
Afraid to move, afraid to breathe, my heart clamouring in my throat
choking me, my hands pressed against my teeth, I could not even
scream.
What lay there? What was in that room?
Then I realized dimly that Maida was coming, that a small circle of
light was at the door, that a hand was holding a lamp unsteadily and
the wavering flame was casting grotesque shadows on Maida’s chin and
mouth. Above them her eyes were wide and black and mirrored my terror.
I saw her hand advance, pointing at my feet. It shook. Her mouth
opened in a voiceless cry and I forced myself to look downward.
It was Higgins, sprawled there at the foot of the bed. He had been
shot!
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us moved.
At last Maida withdrew her hand.
“Set the lamp down,” I heard someone saying—it must have been I. “Set
the lamp down before you drop it.”
We did not hear O’Leary enter the south door. All at once he was there
with us, staring at the thing there on the floor, holding his electric
torch to illumine it.
“When did it happen? How? Come into the hall. Tell me. Was I too
late?”
Somehow we were out in the corridor; the lamp was left on the table in
Room 18. The light from its small flame trembled and cast eery,
creeping shadows.
“Quick,” said O’Leary. “Take that lamp to the basement, Miss Day. The
light switch has been pulled out. You know where the switch-box is——”
I saw Maida flinch but she took the lamp, averting her eyes from the
floor.
“Hurry! No, Miss Keate, stay here, please, at the door. If anyone
tries to get in, stop him! Scream! I’ll not be far away.”
In a flash he was gone, out the south door. I was still standing as if
petrified, there in front of the south door, when the green light over
the chart desk at the opposite end of the corridor flashed up and the
little red signal lights gleamed suddenly all up and down the hall. I
breathed a sigh of relief; Maida was all right, then. And in another
moment or two her white uniform came into view at the chart desk.
“All right, thank you, Miss Keate,” came a voice at my elbow. It was
O’Leary, his hat gone, his hair ruffled, his eyes shining like
phosphorescent flashes on a deep-lying sea. “Come with me, please,” he
said.
“Was the fuse burned out?” asked O’Leary as we met Maida, who was
hurrying to answer the signals.
She shook her head. Her eyes were hollow and dark and her face as
white as her cap.
“The main switch had been pulled out.”
“What I expected,” muttered O’Leary, as we sped along the corridor.
Lights were gleaming from the north wing, and the night-duty nurses
from that wing were clustered in a frightened group in the main hall.
As they saw us they ran forward.
“What was it, Miss Keate—we heard a shot—what has happened?” And down
the stairs tumbled several nurses in uniforms and kimonos and Miss
Dotty with her hair in paper curlers and her eyes distracted.
O’Leary paid no attention to them. I followed him into the general
office. He rapped sharply, first at Dr. Hajek’s door, then at the door
of the inner office. Then he put his hand on the latch of the door to
the inner office and pushed. It was not locked and opened readily; the
light from the office streamed through the door.
“O’Leary! What has happened? What is it?” Dr. Balman, his eyes
blinking anxiously in the light, was tossing back the covers and
springing from his bed.
“There has been another murder in Room 18,” said O’Leary.
“Another—what! Who?”
“The janitor—Higgins.” And at that second the door to Dr. Hajek’s room
opened and Dr. Hajek, his bathrobe hugged about him, ran toward us.
“What was that? What did you say? Higgins? Dead?”
In a few, terse words O’Leary explained and by that time we were all
hurrying back to the south wing, Dr. Balman’s white pajamas leading
the way. I did not enter Room 18 again with them.
There was plenty of work waiting for me in the wing. As if to make bad
matters worse the nurses from all over the hospital were crowding into
the south-wing corridor, their pallid faces and wild questions adding
to the confusion. The excitement was becoming tumultuous when Dr.
Balman came into the corridor, a strange figure in his pajamas and
bare feet, his thin hair rumpled and his eyes worried.
“There has been an accident,” he said. His voice carried though it was
very low. “Please return immediately to duty. Do not be alarmed.” And
it was curious to see the nurses scattering hastily like frightened
children caught in mischief.
For a while I had not time or eyes for anything but work. It was
difficult enough to calm and soothe the patients of our wing and I
paid no attention to the closed door of Eighteen, the flying trips
through the corridor made by the two doctors, or O’Leary’s gray suit
and thoughtful countenance and shining eyes here and there about the
wing.
When the police began to arrive, entering the wing by the south door
so as not to be seen by those from other wings, it was a great deal
like the repetition of a bad dream. It continued so until along about
four o’clock when an ambulance, gleaming oddly white and distinct in
the cold gray dawn, was drawn up at the south door. I did not see them
leave.
I was trying to control my still shaking hands in order to get the
neglected charts written up before turning things over to the day
nurses, when O’Leary paused beside me and sat down in the vacant
chair.
“What is that on your hands?” he asked suddenly as I wrote.
I glanced at my hands and jumped.
“Oh!” I remembered. “It is only red ink. I was cleaning up some that I
had spilled when—when the lights went out.”
“When the lights were turned out,” he corrected. “How soon will you
finish that thing?”
“I am through now.” I verified the chart hastily and thrust it in its
place in the rack. “Have you—found anything?”
“Yes.” He spoke coolly. “I have—found a good deal. First, though, why
did you telephone for me?”
“Why, it was Higgins! It was Higgins and now it is too late!”
His gray eyes studied me.
“What do you mean?”
My heart began to thump as speculation aroused within me.
“Higgins,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Higgins saw the
face of the man that killed Mr. Jackson.”
There was a moment of silence so profound that the very walls seemed
to whisper and echo my words; someone in the kitchen nearby dropped a
spoon and at the metallic little rattle O’Leary stirred.
“Higgins—saw the face of the man who killed Jackson,” he repeated
slowly. “How do you know, Miss Keate?”
As rapidly as possible I repeated to him the whole of my amazing
conversation with Higgins. Then, more reluctantly, I told him of Jim
Gainsay’s presence back of the willows where he could overhear every
word we had spoken. I told him also of what the cook had said.
His inscrutable eyes studying me shrewdly, O’Leary said nothing until
I had finished.
“Then Jim Gainsay heard Higgins not only admit his dangerous knowledge
but promise to tell you to-night the name of that man. _To-night._”
“Yes.” Then as I caught the emphasis, I went on hurriedly: “But Jim
Gainsay had nothing to do with his death. I saw nothing of Jim Gainsay
to-night. I—I am sure . . .” My voice trailed breathlessly away under
O’Leary’s sharp regard.
“And as far as we know now Jim Gainsay was the last person to see
Higgins alive?” He continued quite as if I had not rushed to Jim
Gainsay’s defence.
“As far as we know _now_,” I pointed out. “We may find that someone
talked to him after he was seen with Jim Gainsay.”
“Gainsay overheard your conversation. The man whose face Higgins saw
had everything to lose at such evidence. No one but Gainsay and you,
Miss Keate, knew of its existence. I’m sorry; Gainsay seems to be a
decent enough young fellow.” He paused, fumbled in his pocket, drew
out the shabby stub of a pencil and began turning it over and over in
his slender, well-kept fingers.
The light above my head was paling in the slow, gray light of early
morning which was struggling in through the windows and making the
whole place more desolate and more grim and forbidding than it had
been in the dark of night.
“It is a difficult situation,” he said presently.
I pushed my cap farther back on my head and rubbed my hand across my
eyes—eyes that were tired and weary with what they had seen that
night.
“I dread the effect of this night’s doing; it will almost demoralize
our staff, to say nothing of its effect upon outsiders. We are looking
to you to straighten out this hideous tangle. And it must be soon.”
His face was very sober.
“I hope to do so,” he said gravely. “I think I am not saying too much
when I tell you that I have good reason to hope for success.”
There was a restrained little throb of exhilaration in his voice.
“Do you mean——” I began sharply. He interrupted me.
“I mean only that I am beginning to arrive at some conclusions.” And
without giving me a chance to ask what those conclusions were he
continued at once: “Are you sure Higgins said it was a _man’s_ face
that he saw?”
I went back in my memory, over that brief and baffling conversation,
now never to be finished. Poor Higgins!
“No,” I said thoughtfully. “He did not definitely say it was a man.
I—I’m afraid I just assumed it to be a man.”
“Assuming is dangerous,” said O’Leary quietly. “But he did say that he
saw three people?”
“He said he knew that there were three people in Room 18 that night.”
“And that there were four people—Corole Letheny and Dr. Hajek and Jim
Gainsay and—Dr. Letheny in and about St. Ann’s that dark midnight?”
I nodded confirmatively.
“He said, too, that he saw Jim Gainsay’s face by the light of a match.
And that he saw the face of the man—or person—who killed Jackson by
the light of the match.”
“But that doesn’t prove——” I began hotly.
“No—no, of course not,” he said absently. “You say he was of the
opinion that the man——”
“He kept saying the ‘party’,” I interpolated.
“Who killed Jackson and the—the party——” with a rather grim tightening
of his lips, O’Leary adopted Higgins’s terms—“Who killed Dr. Letheny
was not the same person.”
“He said ‘no, that couldn’t hardly be.’” Strange how vividly I
recalled his hesitating confession.
“It is apparent, of course, that the man in Room 18 must have had some
sort of light, if only for a second, in order to conceal the radium.
Higgins knew where it was all the time. He swore to me that he had
slept through the whole night. Well——” O’Leary’s shoulders lifted a
little.
“We will never know now what Higgins saw,” I commented, my thoughts
sombre.
O’Leary raised his eyes from the pencil for a moment.
“Don’t be too sure of that, Miss Keate. Did you get the speaker for
me?”
“Yes.”
“Put it in a _safe_ place?”
I nodded. “I longed to look inside it but did not.”
He smiled.
“Suppose we look now.”
The rustle of my starched skirts echoed against the empty gray-white
walls. The general office was deserted, likewise the stairs and
corridors. Once in my room I unlocked the door of the chifferette,
withdrew the speaker, and holding it carefully, hastened back to the
south wing. O’Leary was still sitting beside the chart desk, his gray
gaze on Maida, who was bent over an entry she was making on Three’s
chart. If she wondered what I was doing with the loud speaker she did
not say so but returned immediately to Three.
I set the speaker down on the shining glass top of the chart desk. My
hands were shaking a little and I held my breath while O’Leary removed
one of the sides of the speaker. We both peered into it. Then O’Leary
put his hand inside and groped around.
We stared at the compact arrangement of wires and tiny coils and
screws, then met each other’s gaze.
“Nothing!” I said.
“Nothing!” confirmed O’Leary. He studied the thing thoughtfully for a
moment.
“Did anyone see you take this to your room?”
“No one. That is, no one but—but Maida. I met her at the door just as
I was carrying it to my room.”
“Miss Day—h’mm.” And after another pause: “Are you sure that this is
the same speaker that was in Room 18?”
“Why, yes. No. That is—” I hastened to explain as he cast a decidedly
irritated glance at me—“that is, I mean that this is the speaker that
was in Sonny’s room and I just assumed it to be the one that I had
left there.”
“Assuming again,” remarked O’Leary with dry disapproval. “It might
have been one from another room, then?”
“Yes. It might have been. But I think——”
“Did you know that the speaker at present in Room 18 has been torn
open, probably during the night?”
“What!”
“Evidently the—er—visitor in Room 18 to-night thought what we thought
and did not know that the original speaker in Room 18 had been
removed. Or else——” He left his sentence uncompleted, turned abruptly
and strode down the hall to Sonny’s room.
I followed him to the door. Sonny was awake.
“Good-morning,” said O’Leary kindly. “It is rather early in the
morning for young fellows like you to be awake. Look here, Sonny, the
other night Miss Keate brought in a loud-speaker for the radio
attachment, just like this one in my hand. She left it here and took
away the one that you already had on your table. Then last night, she
came in and took away the speaker she had left with you. I want to
know whether the loud speaker she took away last night was the very
same speaker she brought in here.”
Sonny looked bewildered and O’Leary repeated his question patiently
and clearly.
“Why, no,” said Sonny finally. “That speaker she brought in wouldn’t
work.”
“What happened to it, then?”
“Why”—Sonny frowned—“Miss Day was in to see me and I told her the
speaker wasn’t working so she took it away and brought me another. The
one she brought in worked fine. But Miss Keate came and got it last
night.” He looked reproachfully at me.
“Thank you, Sonny,” said O’Leary briefly.
I have never seen O’Leary showing any feeling or excitement, but there
were eighteen rooms in that wing and I don’t think it took him
eighteen minutes to examine all the loud speakers in the whole wing.
He did not omit one save, of course, that already rifled speaker in
Room 18.
When he had finished, still without any results that I could see, he
went to Maida.
“Miss Day,” he began, “you took a loud speaker exactly like this
one”—he still carried under his arm the instrument that I had so
futilely treasured—“from Sonny’s room last night. What did you do with
it?”
Maida put back a wisp of black hair that had strayed from under her
immaculate cap; her blue eyes regarded us steadily from the weary,
dark circles about them.
“I put it on the table in Room 18,” she replied at once. “It was out
of order somehow, and I thought likely Room 18 would be unoccupied. So
I simply exchanged the speakers.”
“Thank you, Miss Day. You did not—er—examine it closely to see what
was wrong with it?”
“No,” she said. “I know nothing of such things; I couldn’t possibly
have repaired it.”
She went on about her errand.
“A strange case,” mused O’Leary, his clear, gray eyes following the
slim, white-clad figure moving away from us. “The speaker in Room 18
was the right one, after all. The question is, was the radium in it
and if so who took it? Who has it now? When we know that answer we
will know who shot poor old Higgins.” He went to the window over the
chart desk, flung it up to the sash, and took a deep breath of the
fog-laden air. His intent young face, his curiously lucid gray eyes,
showed no hint of a night without sleep.
“A strange case,” he repeated absently. He turned from the dripping
gray orchard beyond the window, fingered idly the bronzed surface of
the loud speaker there on the desk.
“Another thing, Miss Keate—did you notice that when Dr. Hajek came
from his room to-night, presumably from his bed, he wore trousers
under that bathrobe that he held so tightly to him? And that those
trousers had fresh, wet mud stains about the cuffs?”
I murmured something, I don’t know what, and O’Leary met my shocked
gaze quietly.
“And furthermore,” he said softly, “I found fresh mud stains on the
window sill of his room. Really, Miss Keate, this hospital of yours
should have been built with its first floor higher from the ground.
Entrances and exits are too easy.”