Somebody knocked at the door; Sutton rose nervously, unlocked and
opened it, dazzled by the outer lights.
Figures in brilliant silks entered--Pockman, Sadoul, a man and a young
woman in street clothes, carrying valises, and George Derring wearing
violet royal robes and tinsel crown, his vizard pushed up over his bald
forehead, a monocle shining in his pallid face.
“What the devil is all this?” he demanded. “If the girl is actually
dead she can’t remain in my place. The thing to do is to call up the
proper authorities----”
“Keep your shirt on,” interrupted Pockman calmly. “Come on in, Miss
Cross. You can change your dress in the next bedroom. Come over here,
Stent. Unpack your things on that table----”
“Is--this girl--dead?” faltered Derring, peering at the sheeted shape
through his monocle.
Pockman consulted his watch: “She’s been dead for three hours and forty
minutes, George.”
“Why didn’t you t-tell me?” stammered Derring. “What are you going to
do to her? This isn’t a morgue. It isn’t a place for autopsies----”
Sadoul drew the stammering man aside: “If you’ll keep your mouth shut,
Pockman will see to it that this affair is kept out of the newspapers.
Go downstairs, George, and when your party breaks up, come back here
and we’ll fix it up for you so there’ll be no notoriety or scandal.”
Derring, white and inclined to tremble, suffered himself to be led to
the door and thrust out. Sadoul turned the key with a grimace and came
back to where Pockman stood aiding his assistant, Stent, to unpack the
valises.
A case of surgical instruments was laid on the table. Beside this Stent
placed a miniature porcelain refrigerator, several basins, packets of
sterilized gauze, other objects unfamiliar to Sutton.
The young woman whom Pockman had addressed as Miss Cross came back from
the further bedroom clad in the white garb of a hospital nurse. She
seemed to know what was to be done with the several packages from the
valises and became exceedingly busy.
Pockman and Sadoul, carrying other packets, went away together toward
the bathroom, leaving Sutton standing alone by the table.
The efficient Miss Cross paid him no attention. She first unrolled a
rubber sheet and then began to undress the dead girl.
Sutton pivoted in his tracks and went slowly toward the bathroom, where
Pockman and Sadoul, their masquerade finery discarded, were dressing
in the white robes of operating surgeons. A smell of disinfectants
pervaded the place.
“What are you preparing to do?” asked Sutton.
“Stick around and see,” replied Pockman flippantly. His white robes and
flat, fat face made a most unpleasant impression upon Sutton.
Sadoul, also, was ready now; they returned to the room of death.
“If you’re squeamish,” remarked Sadoul, with his odd, shadowy smile,
“you’d better leave the room, Sutton.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I? Nothing. Pockman, however, is going to try something.”
“If she’s already dead, what more is there to try?” asked the other
huskily.
“Stand over here and watch. We shan’t be long.”
“Is--is this sort of thing legal, Sadoul?”
“Certainly. At least there’s no law forbidding it. Pockman is a
graduate physician. There are no laws forbidding a qualified physician,
who has been called in to do his best, from doing his best. And this is
Pockman’s one best bet.”
“But--after death--what _is_ there a physician can do?”
“What _is_ death?” asked Sadoul, with his dark and shadowy smile.
There ensued a silence while the washing of the unclothed body was
accomplished and the corpse laid face downward. One by one Pockman
took certain sterilized instruments from Miss Cross, employed each
with incredible deftness. Sutton had averted his head as Pockman made
a tiny, deep incision at the nape of the girl’s neck. The hemorrhage
was slight; Sadoul opened the drawer of the miniature refrigerator,
Miss Cross took from it something that she carefully placed in a vessel
filled with liquid. Twice she tested the temperature of the liquid.
“Ready,” she said in her low, pleasant voice.
With his forceps Pockman picked out from the liquid in the vessel
something that seemed to resemble a small oviform body--like a lump of
animal tissue, and inserted it in the incision which he had made at the
nape of the dead girl’s neck.
Deftly the wound was closed, sterilized, covered with a film of
transparent liquid which instantly hardened. A few drops of blood had
flowed freely.
“All right,” murmured Pockman, “turn her over.”
He cast another brief glance at the dead girl, then walked back to the
bathroom to wash.
Sadoul followed him, wiping his dark, bony hands on a bit of gauze.
Sutton, feeling slightly nauseated, turned away from the body which
Miss Cross was now swathing in a sterilized sheet.
He stood at one of the darkened and dripping windows, staring out. It
was raining, but a few large snowflakes slanted through the downpour.
The odours in the room--the taint of death--were becoming insufferable;
he went to the door, drew the bolt, and stepped outside onto the
balcony.
The ball was over, the music gone. The last of the maskers were leaving
the studio--a loud-voiced group lingering in the supper room, another
near the entrance hall.
Old Derring, in his rumpled royal robes, his crown on the back of
his ruddy, bald head, stood nervously receiving the adieux and noisy
gratitude of his guests. The air reeked with perfume of roses and scent
of wine; the floor was littered with débris of finery and confetti.
When at length Sutton returned to the room, the daybed was empty;
Stent had already repacked both valises and was putting his hat on
and buttoning his overcoat. Pockman, Sadoul, and Miss Cross had gone
into the farther bedroom, where a light burned. Sutton could see them
through the vista of the connecting rooms, moving quietly about,
dressed now in their street clothing--excepting Miss Cross, who still
wore her nurse’s garb.
When he went in to the chamber where they were gathered he discovered
that the dead girl had been laid in Derring’s guest-room bed.
She seemed asleep there on the pillow; her eyes were decently closed,
the bed sheets drawn to her throat. Only her wax-like skin betrayed her
condition.
As Sutton entered the room, Pockman turned toward him:
“Your views concerning the dignity and tragedy of death,” he said, with
that ever present undertone of irony, “are the popular and accepted
views. So if you don’t think it very charitable to leave this lady all
alone here during the night, why not sit up with her until I return in
the morning?”
Sutton flushed. “Somebody ought to remain here out of mere decency,” he
said slowly.
“All right. It’s up to you. Miss Cross is to stay for another hour;
and I’d really be obliged to you if you’d stand guard here tonight and
keep old Derring from making a fuss. Will you?”
After a silence: “What was it you did to her?” enquired Sutton in a
constrained voice, not yet under full control.
“Nothing illegal. I am within my rights. Ask Miss Cross. If nothing
happens it won’t make any difference, anyway. If anything should
happen, why, I don’t care how much it’s talked about. Do you, Sadoul?”
“Rather not,” said Sadoul, with that almost imperceptible smile on his
dark face, that waned and waxed like a shadow.
“What _could_ happen?” demanded Sutton. “Death is death--isn’t it?”
Pockman shrugged, gathered up his discarded carnival robes, went over
and gazed at the dead girl with a sort of mockery in his washed-out
eyes--yet his silent scrutiny was sufficiently intent to reveal some
graver motive--something deeper seated than sardonic indifference.
Presently he turned away, with a characteristic hunching of his
shoulders.
Sadoul followed him; Miss Cross went to the door with them and there
they remained in low-voiced consultation until interrupted by the
nervous entrance of Derring, still tremulous from shock but beginning
to choke with indignation.
And his anger knew no bounds when he learned what disposition had been
made of the dead girl; only a threat of newspaper notoriety hinted by
Pockman checked his rush to the telephone.
“If she’s dead,” he kept repeating, “what the hell do you fellows mean
by keeping her here in my apartment? It isn’t done, dammit all----”
“You go to the Ritz tonight,” counselled Sadoul. “She’ll be taken away
tomorrow morning without any fuss or scandal. Tell your man to pack a
bag--there’s a good fellow. Be a sport, Derring. Pockman is trying
something he never had a chance to try----”
“Confound him, are there no hospitals and morgues? What does he mean by
using my place to try his ghastly experiments----”
“Oh, shut up,” said Sadoul, and shoved the master of the house through
the door.
A fat man-servant arrived at his shrill summons, went into his master’s
bedroom, packed a suitcase, and carried it out again, breathing
laboriously. Sadoul and Pockman also put on their hats and went out.
Presently the front grille clanged distantly. Miss Cross closed and
locked the apartment door and came back to the chamber of death, where
Sutton was standing, fumbling with a rose-bud which he had found in a
silver vase.
“Yes,” said Miss Cross encouragingly, “lay it on her chest if you
choose.”
He dried the stem with his handkerchief and laid the blossom on the
white coverlet close to her snowy chin.
Miss Cross hovered over the dead girl, touched the bright hair here
and there, deftly curled and brought a saucy, wandering tendril under
graver discipline, more suitable to the circumstances.
“She was very pretty, wasn’t she?” remarked Miss Cross in her low,
pleasant voice, “--a very lovely young thing, physically--really quite
perfect, I should say.”
“What--what was it Pockman did to her in the other room?” enquired
Sutton in a strained voice.
Miss Cross had taken a chair. She was a healthy, vigourous young woman,
with black eyes and hair, a rosy and cheerful mouth, and a tip-tilted
nose.
Replying to Sutton’s question, she said: “If I answer you, I don’t
believe you’ll entirely understand.”
“Was it a precautionary test?”
“Oh, no. We all knew she was quite dead. Dr. Pockman desired to try
something never before attempted----” She looked up at Sutton,
hesitated. “--Why don’t you smoke?” she suggested. “You are dreadfully
nervous. It’s no disrespect to her. Seat yourself, Mr. Sutton, and
light a cigarette. I’m sure if she could speak she’d tell you to do so
too, poor lamb.”