A Matter of Evidence
I must say that I was considerably relieved to see O’Leary’s eyelids
flutter, the colour return to his face, and to note that his breath
began to come more naturally. In a few moments he was sitting upright
on the edge of the table, supported by Dr. Balman’s arm.
“What on earth happened to you?” inquired Dr. Balman, looking relieved
also.
“I don’t know,” replied O’Leary rather dazedly. “All I remember is
something coming down on my head. When did you find me?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. Dr. Hajek and I were just going
downstairs. It was not very light in the hallway and you were in the
shadow there by the stairs. It—gave us a nasty shock. Do you know why
you were attacked?”
O’Leary flicked a warning glance at me and shook his head.
“Haven’t the least idea,” he said flatly.
Dr. Hajek, who had been standing silently by, stirred at this.
“Then you were not on the point of making a—er—disclosure?” he asked
with an air of disappointment. His ruddy face was as unmoved and
stolid as ever, but it seemed to me that those dark, knowing eyes were
restrained and secretive and did not meet O’Leary’s gaze squarely.
“No such luck! By the way, were you men coming up from downstairs when
you found me?”
“No,” replied Dr. Balman. “No. I had been O.K.-ing some orders in the
inner office; Dr. Hajek came out of his room into the general office
just as I, too, entered it and we walked together out into the hall
and toward the basement stairs.”
“You saw nothing unusual?”
“Nothing. We were talking of advertising for a new janitor. It was—”
Dr. Balman’s kind, distressed eyes roved over O’Leary anxiously as if
to be quite sure he was not hurt—“it was, as I said, a shock. For a
moment we feared the worst.” He drew out a handkerchief and wiped his
pale lips nervously, his fingers lingering to pull at his thin beard.
“Mr. O’Leary, I know that you are working hard and I don’t mean to
criticize but really—I——” he hesitated as if put to it to find words.
“You see for yourself to what terrible straits this thing has brought
us. We don’t know what to expect next. Can nothing be done to stop
it?”
It was just at this interesting point, of course, that Miss Dotty had
to interrupt and summon me away, and it was something after midnight
before I saw O’Leary again.
I was on duty at the time, Maida assisting me as usual, and our force
augmented again, according to another whim of Miss Dotty’s, by two
training nurses, both obviously unnerved at their contact with the
south wing of such ill repute. Their blue-and-white striped skirts
rattled nervously as they trotted here and there about the wing. While
I did not feel unduly alarmed myself, still it seemed all too clear
that the guilty one was still about, an unknown menace and hence more
terrible, and I don’t mind admitting that my ears were alert to any
alien sounds.
I was sitting at the chart desk when I heard O’Leary’s quick, light
steps coming along the corridor from the general office. I turned to
watch him approach, his gray suit and grave, keen face gradually
emerging into the green circle of light that surrounded me.
“Have you found the radium?” I asked at once.
He shook his head.
“Nor who took it from you?”
“Nor who took it—naturally.” He dropped into a chair beside me. “Now,
Miss Keate, tell me exactly how you came upon it.”
Feeling that it was no time to mince matters I complied, much as I
disliked the implications the story involved. He listened
thoughtfully, drawing a red pencil from his pocket and actually using
it to scribble some notes in a small, shabby notebook he brought
forth. He did not comment when I had finished, save to ask if Miss Day
was on duty. And at the moment Maida herself entered the corridor from
some sick room, O’Leary rose and intercepted her at once and the two
disappeared into the drug room.
I was left to wait, always a difficult task for one of my temperament
and particularly unpleasant that night. It seemed hours but was
actually not more than twenty minutes by my watch, before they
emerged. Maida’s chin was in the air, her cheeks quite scarlet, and
her eyes flashing blue fire, but O’Leary was imperturbable. He stopped
for a word with me and I suppose noted the anxiety which I was at no
pains to hide. He smiled into my gaze a bit ruefully.
“She has a reason for everything,” he said quietly. “If I could only
be sure that she is telling the truth!”
“She always tells the truth!” I cried indignantly.
“I hope so——” he hesitated. “It is difficult to explain, but all
through her story I had the strangest impression that she
had—rehearsed the whole thing.”
“What did she say of the radium?”
“Says she found it in a pot of lobelia that was in the hall outside
Room 18. She noted that the flowers were withered and needed water,
took it to the kitchen to water, noted that it had been disturbed
and—found the radium hidden below the plant! She took the radium to
her own room until she could get in touch with me. She says she did
not know that I was in the hospital after the inquest until she saw me
leaving.”
“That is true,” I said quickly. “And I remember the pot of lobelia,
too. Only——” I wrinkled my forehead thoughtfully. “Why, the last I saw
it, the thing was still in Room 18! Not in the corridor, at all!”
“When did you see it last?” he asked quickly.
“Last night—about dusk.”
He looked at me soberly.
“Then the man in Room 18 last night—if it was a man—must have hidden
the radium for fear he would be caught with the incriminating box. He
must have thrust it hurriedly into the flower pot and left plant and
all in the corridor in the hope of being able to get hold of the
radium more easily than if it were left again in Room 18. That is, if
we are to believe Miss Day’s statement. Positively that lobelia _was
not in Room 18_ when I examined the room almost immediately after
Higgins’s death. I did not miss a square inch!”
I was still thinking of Maida.
“Did you ask her about the hypodermic syringe?”
He nodded.
“She says that she found her own needle had disappeared, naturally
disliked calling anyone’s attention to the fact, in view of the
existing circumstances, and simply substituted your tool for the lost
one. She says she acted hastily and only from a dislike of being even
remotely connected with the tragedies. My own opinion is that someone
advised her to do so. Especially since there was a cut-and-dried air
about everything she said.”
“How did the hypodermic syringe get out there in the shrubbery?”
“Miss Day insists that she knows nothing of that. And I’m more than
half inclined to believe her, there.”
“The cuff link?” I persisted anxiously.
His clear eyes narrowed.
“The cuff link is the reason that I doubt her whole story. She still
declared that she lost the cuff link and that Dr. Letheny must have
picked it up. If she would only tell me the truth about that!” He
pulled a yellow slip of paper from his notebook. I recognized it
immediately. It was the note Jim Gainsay had written and asked me to
take to Maida.
“Read it,” said O’Leary.
Thinking it more discreet to say nothing of my own connection with the
note, I did as he requested. It was headed: “Friday afternoon” and
read thus:
Must see you at once. Important. C. knows about last night. Say
nothing and let me advise you. Will wait at the bridge. Very anxious
since news of this afternoon. Be warned. Cannot urge too
emphatically. Please meet me at bridge.
It was signed with a vigorously scrawled “J.G.”
I read the thing, read it again and raised my eyes to O’Leary’s.
“It was found in Miss Day’s room,” he explained. “In a pocket of a
uniform, in fact; when I asked her to explain it she said at first
that it was a message of a personal nature and that she would not
explain it. I was forced to urge and she finally admitted exactly
three things. First, that the note was written by Jim Gainsay. Second,
that ‘C’ referred to Corole Letheny. And third——” He paused as if to
give the coming words more emphasis.
“And third—simply this: That Jim Gainsay was strolling in the orchard
about one o’clock on the night Dr. Letheny was killed. He passed the
open window of the diet kitchen, saw her within, and stopped for a
word or two through the window. Corole Letheny was also in the
orchard, heard their conversation, and threatened to start a scandal,
knowing that it would not sound well for a nurse to be seen visiting
thus when she was on duty and at such an hour. For some reason Corole
Letheny has developed a violent dislike for Jim Gainsay. According to
Miss Day, then, he wrote to warn her against Corole.” O’Leary’s clear
gray eyes searched my face. “Somehow the reasons Miss Day gave do not
seem to warrant the extreme urgency expressed in this note. Do you
think so, Miss Keate?”
“I hardly know,” I said thoughtfully. “Of course, it takes less than
that to start a scandal, particularly if the starter is determined and
malicious. And Corole is both. She is naturally rather—feline, you
know.”
He took the note from my hand.
“‘Since news of this afternoon’ can only refer to Dr. Letheny’s death.
No, Miss Keate. What would a little breath of evil comment such as
Miss Letheny could start have to do with Dr. Letheny’s death? No—there
is a deeper reason. I wish I could persuade Miss Day to be frank with
me. Well, now to see if Gainsay tells the same story. Probably he
will, but we will see.” He paused to regard me soberly. “Is there any
room here in the wing where Gainsay and I could be undisturbed for a
time? This is a case where the very leaves of the shrubbery seem to
have ears and I don’t want Miss Corole to overhear us—or anyone else.”
“Why, yes,” I said slowly. “There is the drug room.”
The red light above Six gleamed. No other nurse was about, so I
interrupted myself to answer and bring Sonny a fresh drink.
“I’ve been wishing you would come in to see me,” said Sonny
cheerfully. “I’ve been alone ever since a man named Gainsay stopped to
see me just at supper time. He wanted to know where everyone was and I
told him it was just the time when you were all eating. Say, do you
know him? I like him. He is a friend of Dr. Letheny’s. Say, why
doesn’t Dr. Letheny come in to see me?”
“Sonny, did you say that Mr. Gainsay was here in St. Ann’s? Here in
your room at dinner time?”
“Why, sure, he was here! Just about six o’clock.”
“Where did he go when he left your room?”
“I think he went on up the corridor toward the general office. I can’t
be sure, though, for I was working a new cross-word puzzle and didn’t
listen for his steps. Say, Miss Keate, want to see my new puzzle?”
I forestalled the thin hand groping on the bedside table.
“Another time, Sonny. You must go to sleep now.”
O’Leary’s fingers sought the red pencil stub as I told him.
“So,” he pondered, “Jim Gainsay was here in St. Ann’s.”
“Where he had no business to be,” I interpolated grimly.
“And he was here at about the time I was knocked out and the radium
stolen. This increases my interest in Mr. Gainsay.” He thrust his stub
of a pencil into his pocket, ran a hand over his already smooth hair,
and glanced at his watch. “I think we’ll have to disturb Jim Gainsay’s
rest to-night—if he is asleep. You are sure the drug room will not be
in use, Miss Keate?”
“If we need anything I’ll get it myself,” I promised hastily. There
was a sort of repressed smile on his face as he turned away, though
I’m sure I don’t know why.
Jim Gainsay must not have been asleep, for within five minutes the two
men were coming along the corridor from the main entrance. One of the
student nurses saw me lead them into the drug room and her eyes would
likely have popped out had I not spoken sharply to her. On the theory
that every cloud has a silver lining I considered it fortunate that
Eleven chose that very time for a rather cataclysmic upheaval which
kept Maida thoroughly engrossed for an hour or so, and I don’t think
she ever knew of the interview that took place there in our wing.
She came very near it once, when she hurried for some soothing drops,
but I forestalled her by offering to get the medicine myself. If she
thought my hasty offer curious, she said nothing and went back to her
patient.
Opening the drug-room door I walked into an electric atmosphere. Jim
Gainsay, lounging tall and bronzed against the window sill, was
clearly furious; his eyes were narrow and wary, his lean jaw was set,
his lips tight and guarded.
I caught the words . . . “entirely a personal matter” in no very
pleasant voice from Jim Gainsay.
“I must insist upon an answer, however,” said O’Leary. His voice had
the keenness of a slender, shining steel blade.
Then both men became aware of my presence, and though I was rather
deliberate in measuring the drops, they said nothing further until I
left, when the murmur of their voices began again.
The interview prolonged itself and it was a good half hour before I
had a chance—that is, needed to go into the drug room again, and it
was only for an ice bag.
“And yet you remain a welcome guest in Corole Letheny’s house?” said
O’Leary.
“Not so darned welcome,” replied Jim Gainsay, and I caught the flicker
of a smile on O’Leary’s face as I closed the door.
In a few moments, however, O’Leary opened the door, peered down the
corridor, saw me and beckoned.
His eyes were shining with that peculiarly lucent look as he motioned
for me to precede him into the drug room.
“I want you to hear this, Miss Keate,” said O’Leary, his voice very
quiet but with a tense, alert overtone that caught my ears. “Now,
Gainsay, will you repeat that about Higgins?”
Jim Gainsay glanced at me rather sheepishly.
“I was telling O’Leary how it happened that I overheard most of your
talk with Higgins the afternoon before his death. It struck me as
foolish to let such a mine of information get away, and later in the
evening I got hold of Higgins and wormed some more of the story out of
him. For the most part he just repeated what he had already told you,
Miss Keate. But he did tell me the scrap of conversation that he
promised to tell you—remember?”
I nodded.
“It seems that he heard it when he stopped there near the south
entrance on his way to see Dr. Letheny. I suppose it was this
conversation as much as anything that made him suspicious of what was
going on in Room 18. It seems that he knew at once who was on the
other side of the bush; it was Corole and Dr. Hajek. Corole
said—according to Higgins—‘To follow would be easy, now,’ and Hajek
said ‘Wait till he comes out.’ Then Corole said something about it not
being difficult and Hajek said ‘Leave it to me.’ Then Higgins thought
he must have made some noise among the leaves, for Corole whispered
‘Hush’ and he heard them slipping away. Higgins followed but soon lost
them in the dark and himself returned to the interesting vicinity of
Room 18.” He paused.
“Go on,” said O’Leary grimly.
“Higgins told you how he came back to the porch and stumbled over a
coat. I got him to tell me something about the coat. He said it must
have been ‘one of them slickers,’ for it felt cold and oily. And at
the same time he told me a peculiar thing.” Again he paused as if what
he was about to say was distasteful to him. I glanced at O’Leary; his
eyes still wore that strangely luminous expression. Even the glass
doors of the cupboards all around us and the shining white tiles
seemed to wait expectantly.
“Go on,” said O’Leary sharply, his words breaking into the crystal
silence.
Jim Gainsay cleared his throat, felt in his pocket for a cigarette,
remembered that he was in a hospital and replaced it.
“He said the coat smelled of—ether!”
There was a moment of silence. Then I turned to O’Leary.
“Ether! It was the same slicker! The one that I wore Friday
afternoon!”
O’Leary nodded thoughtfully.
“It might be. At any rate we know that no slicker was found on the
porch or about the grounds, so it is likely that the murderer of Dr.
Letheny carried it away with him. We had a strict guard on St. Ann’s
the day following the murders. It is barely possible that we can yet
trace the coat that you wore, Miss Keate.”
“Poor Higgins,” said Jim Gainsay gravely. “I had a hard time getting
him to tell me that much. He refused to the last to tell me whose face
he saw there in Room 18.”
“But he failed to raise an alarm even though he had reason to think
that the radium was being removed,” murmured O’Leary. “Well, that’s
all now, thank you, Gainsay.”
Jim Gainsay paused for a moment outside the door and I saw him look
carefully up and down the dim corridor. No white uniform was in sight,
however. Thinking to facilitate his departure I took the key to the
south door from its hiding place and let him out that way. When I
returned O’Leary was standing under the green light, studying his
small notebook. He slipped it into his pocket as I approached.
“Nothing, Miss Keate, but what you heard,” he said rather wearily.
“His explanation of the note to Miss Day and his activities during the
night of the murders are identical with what Miss Day tells us. He
sticks to the story of his telegram to his business associates that he
told at the inquest. He says he took Dr. Letheny’s car and left the
grounds of St. Ann’s very soon after you met him in the dark. And that
he was at a ‘corner about half a mile from St. Ann’s’ when the storm
broke—which does not coincide with what we know. That is, if the
lights you saw were the lights of the car he was driving, and it seems
reasonable to believe that they were.”
“How about his presence here in St. Ann’s to-night at the time the
radium was taken from you?”
“That got a rise out of him,” said O’Leary with an unexpected flash of
whimsical satisfaction. “He was angry in a second. Every time Miss
Day’s name came up he turned savage. If the radium had not disappeared
I should be inclined to think that he came to St. Ann’s in the hope of
seeing Miss Day, but with the radium gone again——” he stopped
abruptly, his face becoming grave again and dubious.
The green light cast crawling shadows; the black window pane stared
impenetrably at us; far down the corridor a light went on with a
subdued click, a glass clinked thinly against something metal, and I
heard the soft pad-pad of a nurse’s rubber heels.
Presently O’Leary stirred. His eyes, still shining with that very
lucent look, met mine intently.
“Corole Letheny is next. Do you want to go to see her with me? Very
well, then, suppose we say at eight in the morning. You might just
happen into the Letheny cottage and I’ll come. I may be a little
delayed.”
The remaining hours of second watch dragged a little but passed
quietly, and promptly at eight o’clock I wrapped myself in my blue,
scarlet-lined cape, adjusted the wrinkled folds of the detestable
Bishop collar, and let myself out the south door. The path was still
wet, the trees and shrubbery were veiled in heavy mist, and the whole
world very sombre and desolate.
At the bridge I came upon Jim Gainsay. He was sitting disconsolately
on a log a little aside from the path, staring at a toad hopping
across his feet and apparently lost in his own morose thoughts. I
don’t think he had slept for he looked haggard and cold and must have
been smoking steadily for hours, for there was a little white circle
of cigarette ends around him.
“Young man,” I said with some acerbity, “don’t you know that
cigarettes are coffin nails and you are making yourself subject to
indigestion, nervous disorders, tuberculosis and asthma?”
He rose grudgingly and surveyed me without enthusiasm.
“To say nothing of measles and hay fever,” he said dourly. “Say, Miss
Keate, is there any chance of seeing—her?”
I did not ask whom.
“I don’t know. Have you not seen her lately?”
He glanced at me suspiciously, then motioned to a seat on the log and
I found myself seated none too comfortably, with the moisture of a
tree dripping down and completing the demoralization of my collar, and
beside me a man whom I suspected of theft and—theft, to say the least.
“That was why I was in the hospital last night about dinner time,” he
said companionably. “I haven’t seen her for days and days. She is too
damn’ devoted to duty.”
“Miss Day is a nice girl,” I said uncertainly.
“Nice!” He glared at me. “Nice! Is that all you can say for her? Lord!
She can have me! The minute I saw her, I thought, ‘There she is!
There’s my girl!’ Say!” he drew a long breath—“and after I talked to
her alone, there at that kitchen window last Thursday night, I knew
Jim Gainsay’s time had come! I drove straight into town and wired the
company that I should be delayed. And here I stay until she goes with
me.” He paused and added ruefully: “It may take quite a while to
convince her that she wants to go.”
“So that was what your message meant?”
He looked at me quickly. No matter what O’Leary said later I do not
believe that Gainsay’s explanation was anything but spontaneous.
“Why didn’t you explain before?” I asked tartly, thinking of the
trouble he had caused us.
“Explain!” cried Jim Gainsay in high derision. “The woman says
‘Explain’! Explain that I’ve gone straight off my head about a girl!
Please, kind gentlemen, excuse me for hanging around just when murders
are being perpetrated and no strangers wanted on the premises. But
really, you know, I’ve just fallen in love. Explain! Hell!”
In some dignity I rose; even justifiable ill-nature can go too far.
“Good-morning, Mr. Gainsay,” I said coldly. But as I turned the bend
in the path, I looked backward. “I’ll ask her to take a walk this
afternoon,” I promised, being a fool of an old maid. He brightened up
at that and the last I saw of him he was casting pebbles at the frog
with the liveliest interest on the part of each.
The porch of the Letheny cottage was still unswept and desolate, and
though I rang and rang apparently no one heard me. Finally I opened
the heavy door and walked into the hall. No one seemed to be about.
The door to the study was closed, and thinking to find Corole there if
anywhere I approached it. But with my hand actually on the brass knob,
I paused, for the door itself swung gently a few inches toward me, I
heard a low murmur of voices and realized that someone was on the
other side of the door and in the very act of emerging from it.
“You are sure it is safe there?” said someone clearly.
It was Dr. Hajek’s voice.
“Quite,” said Corole, whose accents were unmistakable.
“Then to-day is as good as any.”
“I—suppose so.” Corole seemed reluctant.
“Are you backing down?” I had not believed that Fred Hajek’s voice
could be so ugly.
“No,” said Corole. “No.”
“Then why not to-day?” The door closed sharply on the last syllable as
if propelled by a vigorous motion on the part of the speaker.
In some perplexity I waited. I could still hear the sounds of voices,
but the words were unintelligible. All at once, however, the man’s
voice rose as if in anger, and without pausing to consider my action I
simply grasped that brass knob and flung the door open.
I interrupted a strange tableau.
Corole was leaning backward against the table, her lips drawn back in
a snarl and her eyes gleaming green fire. Dr. Hajek was no less moved;
his face was dark red, his fists clinched, his dark eyes glittering
unpleasantly between slitted lids. He was speaking when I opened the
door and I caught his last words. They were thick with fury.
“. . . and now you refuse. After all I have done—_for you!_”
“Oh, I don’t refuse,” cried Corole.
Then they both saw me.
Dr. Hajek’s dark face flushed a still deeper, painful red. By an
effort, apparently of will, he relaxed his hands, reached for a cap
that lay on the table, muttered something under his breath, and
wheeled toward the door. Corole recovered her self-possession more
easily; she raised her eyebrows and shrugged as if in amusement. She
wore an amazing Chinese coat, stiffly embroidered in gold and green,
dancing pumps with rhinestone heels and shabby toes, and _no
stockings_!
“Good-morning,” she said with shameless calm.
I think O’Leary must have met Dr. Hajek in the hall, for I heard his
voice before he entered the study. At the door he stopped.
“You, too,” said Corole, losing her amused smile.
“May I come in, Miss Letheny?” O’Leary asked. He looked as fresh and
well groomed as if he had had a long night’s sleep. “I rang the bell
but no one answered.”
Corole pulled her bizarre coat tighter about her.
“Huldah decided she no longer liked it here,” she said. “She left last
night—rather abruptly. Yes, do come in, Mr. O’Leary.”
There followed an hour I shall not soon forget. I had never seen Lance
O’Leary so mercilessly intent. I was both fascinated and awed to note
the way he cut through Corole’s pretences and poses, her feline
evasions and her suave smiles, and by sheer strength of will forced
her to give to his inquiries answers that were direct if they were not
entirely truthful.
He began with the revolver, but she repeated the denial of all
knowledge regarding its presence in Room 18 she had given at the
inquest. Also, to further questions as to her visit to Room 18 on the
night it had sheltered that irascible patient, Mr. Gastin, she
repeated the lame explanation she had given at the time. She admitted
coolly enough that she understood the use of a hypodermic outfit, and
as coolly, though with an evil glance at me, that she had made a trip
through the orchard immediately after hearing of Dr. Letheny’s death;
she had wished to see Dr. Hajek, she said brazenly, to discuss with
him the news of the tragedy.
It was then that O’Leary held before her eyes the small gold sequin.
“Enough of this, Miss Letheny,” he said coldly. “It would be better
for you to give me your fullest confidence. Why were you at the window
of Room 18 last Thursday night? This ornament was found on the window
sill. How did it get there?”
Corole stared blankly from the gold sequin to O’Leary, but back of
those queer topaz eyes I felt that she was thinking desperately.
“Well,” she said finally, “I _was_ near Room 18. In fact, I went as
far as the window sill. You see, I was walking in the orchard. I was
near the porch of the south wing when I heard something—a sort of
noise, there at the window of the corner room.” She stopped and ran a
quick, catlike tongue over her lips. “Room 18, that is. I was rather
curious so I crept up nearer the window. A man was opening the screen
and crawling into Room 18. He left the screen up and I slipped quietly
up to the window. I am rather tall, you know, and as I leaned for a
moment on the sill I suppose the sequin got detached from my gown.”
“It was very dark that night. Did you see all this?”
She moistened her lips again; they were taking on a bluish tinge.
“I—I see in the dark better than most people.” (Which I, for one, did
not doubt.) “And anyway I could hear, you know.”
“What could you hear? Why should you think that the noise you heard
was made by a man crawling in the window of Room 18? That is just a
little far-fetched, Miss Letheny.”
“It is true, anyhow,” she said sulkily. “I heard the screen catch as
he pulled it up and the sort of—scrambling sound he made, and I could
see the patch of light that was his shirt front.”
“If all that is true, why did you not rouse St. Ann’s at once?”
“Because I knew who the man was.”
There was a brief, electric silence.
“Who was the man?” said O’Leary very quietly.
“My cousin, Louis Letheny.” She brought the name out with a suggestion
of triumph. I do not know whether it was a surprise to O’Leary or not;
however, he said nothing for a full moment. His clear gray eyes were
studying Corole’s face.
“Naturally,” went on Corole with a degree of malicious satisfaction,
“naturally I could not arouse the hospital to advertise the fact that
the head of the institution had just crawled through a window. Who was
I to know Dr. Letheny’s purpose?”
“You are lying,” said O’Leary. “I warned you not to lie. The man you
saw crawling through the window of Room 18 was not Dr. Letheny. You
and Dr. Hajek were together in the orchard that night and you actually
did lean at the window sill, intending to enter Room 18, but Dr.
Letheny was already in Room 18. You and Dr. Hajek discussed whether it
would be better to wait until Dr. Letheny came out of Room 18, or for
Dr. Hajek to follow him into that room.”
In the twinkling of an eye Corole had become saffron yellow, the dabs
of orange rouge on her cheeks stood out, emphasizing her high
cheek-bones with grisly clearness; her eyes were flat and gleaming and
her lips had drawn back a little from her teeth and the garish Chinese
coat accentuated her ugly pallor.
“Who told you that?” she whispered through those hideous lips.
“Higgins told me,” replied O’Leary very distinctly.
“Higgins!” cried Corole hoarsely, flinging up one brown, jewelled hand
toward her throat. “Higgins! But he is dead!”
“Higgins told me,” repeated O’Leary. “Now then, tell me. What did you
and Dr. Hajek do?”
“We—we met at the bridge. We walked together through the orchard.”
Corole’s desperate effort to regain her self-control was not nice to
witness.
“Go on.”
“Then—as I said—we heard a man in Room 18. And wanted to know what he
was doing there. That was natural, I think.” She paused.
“Possibly,” said O’Leary. “Why did you not wait until this—this
man—came out from Eighteen?”
“We did not wait for him. Someone came along. We never knew just who
it was, though I thought that it was Jim Gainsay. He was in the
orchard that night, too.”
“Seems to have been a popular rendezvous,” commented O’Leary grimly.
“So this approaching person frightened you away?”
“Not at all,” denied Corole with a flash of her normal ease. “We
just—left.”
“Where did you go?”
“Through the apple orchard.”
“And having eluded this—er—unknown person, you returned to the
intriguing vicinity of Room 18?”
“No,” said Corole flatly. “I came immediately home.”
“And Dr. Hajek?”
“Returned to his room at St. Ann’s.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
Corole hesitated.
“He told me so, later,” she said lamely.
“Why were you intending to intercept Dr. Letheny—or rather, the man
whom you thought to be Dr. Letheny?”
Corole leaned forward.
“Look here, I _know_ that Louis Letheny was in Room 18 that night!”
“I know that, too,” agreed O’Leary quietly.
She leaned back on the cushions, her eyes puzzled and her swinging
rhinestone heels catching red and green lights.
“Why did you intend to intercept him?” repeated O’Leary.
“Because—Dr. Hajek felt he should know the reason for Louis’s strange
actions.”
“Dr. Hajek being an interne and Dr. Letheny the head doctor,”
commented O’Leary skeptically.
Corole’s eyes shot a vicious, sidelong look at the detective but she
said nothing.