“Yes, Miss Kerr,” his slow methodical fairness was beating against his
natural inclinations. “We want you to tell us exactly what you know
about the death of the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic,
please.”
“The last one?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Well, before I begin I should like to say that the Elijah Wilson is as
dear to my heart as to any of yours, and my humiliation is....”
Again Princeton came to the rescue.
“We know it!”
She flopped her bosom, took a snort of air and continued.
“The patient in Bed 11, Ward B, was admitted Sunday as a patient of Dr.
Ethridge Sterling, Senior, under the observation of Dr. Ethridge
Sterling, Junior....”
“Yes, Miss Kerr. But the thing I wish you to report upon is the
nursing-staff angle....”
She flopped her bosom again and said:
“Miss Kexter, my white nurse on Ward B is one of the finest women I have
ever met in the nursing profession. And she had been most surpassingly
brave through this entire ... investigation.... I think it has come to
that, now....”
“Trained with us?” Dr. Harrison asked.
“Yes. Stood second in her class. She has under her five student nurses
into whose records I have gone most thoroughly ... and who have been
cruelly grilled....”
“Miss Kerr,” Dr. MacArthur interrupted, “we have all been cruelly
grilled as you call it. Please try to realize that it is not because we
suspect your department ... any more than any other ... that we are
questioning you.”
“Dr. MacArthur,” she bit her lips, “my department has been my life; when
it is criticized....”
“We know you do! And so does everybody else concerned,” Dr. Harrison
interposed. “Really Miss Kerr, please stick to what has happened. Your
niece has night duty on Ward B, I believe?”
“She has.”
“She says you gave her orders about what to say to the patients about
the death. Did you?” Cub Sterling had forgotten his manners and become
bitterly stern.
“I wasn’t on duty, Dr. Ethridge.”
“Did you talk to her over the telephone?”
“Of course not. How should I know of the death?”
“Did you talk to her on the ward?”
She inflated entirely and said with a defiant calm:
“Doctor Ethridge, I just answered that question.”
“Then how do you explain her statement, Miss Kerr?”
A sudden terror flicked her china blue eyes. She dropped the lids
instantly and replied with studied slowness:
“The child has been through such an ordeal, she was rattled.”
“Thank you.”
Bear Sterling shifted, Dr. Harrison stroked his beard, Dr. MacArthur
frowned and took up the questioning before Cub Sterling had regained his
composure.
“Who has charge of the hypodermic syringes on your floors, Miss Kerr?”
“The white nurse in charge.”
“Who has access to them?”
“She and the student nurses on duty.”
“At all hours?” Bear Sterling rumbled.
“At _all_ hours, Dr. Sterling. _Night_ as well as day,” she defied.
“I see.”
His two words nicked her composure. She questioned shortly:
“Why aren’t you questioning my night supervisor?”
“She was not available when your niece discovered the murder, and
therefore her testimony would have no value.”
“Where was she?” Dr. Harrison drawled.
Miss Kerr began to turn purple.
“In the lavatory, Doctor.”
“What time did you get into the Clinic this morning, Miss Kerr?”
She turned her defiant eyes upon Cub Sterling and struck:
“At four sharp. The night superintendent had called me at three-thirty
and told me. I came over immediately. You were still with Dr. MacArthur,
I believe.”
Again his “Thank you” cut her down.
Dr. MacArthur realized she was useless, so he said:
“Thank you, Miss Kerr. You have been a great help. Of course I do not
have to ask a person of your integrity to realize the necessity of
silence.”
Princeton took his cue and opened the door.
Miss Kerr rose majestically and smiled inclusively.
She left every man in the room irritated.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. MacArthur soothed, “that is all of the testimony,
except Mattus’ story, and Dr. Sterling, Ethridge and I went over it with
him while we were awaiting the autopsy findings. Any questions or
decisions before Heddis comes?”
“What was Mattus’ statement?” Dr. Harrison asked.
“That he found the patient in the condition Father and I did when he
made his rounds, and the next time he saw her, at three-five, she was
dead,” Cub Sterling responded.
“Could the murderer have any animus against the patients?” Barton asked
leaning forward.
“Not likely,” Cub said. “One from out of town and genteel poor, second
dispensary admission, and the last old patient. Been in the hospital
before.”
He was interrupted by a knock upon the door and Dr. Heddis’ stout, round
body, with its piano-post legs and lion head protruded through the
opening. His wide-set yellow-brown eyes, even in repose, dominated his
highly intelligent face. Dr. MacArthur motioned him into the “witness
chair” and he began speaking in a high, tired voice which, because of
his increasing deafness, had a sing-song quality.
In ordinary conversation his impediment required a “raising” of his
questioner’s voice, so upon a subject of which men spoke in whispers any
information he had to give automatically became a soliloquy:
“’Morning, gentlemen. Luck, pure luck! Organs appeared perfectly normal.
Began the obscure tests alphabetically. It would have taken two days to
reach coniine, if my nose hadn’t been haunted by an almost imperceptible
odor; after about a half hour my brain finally diagnosed it.
“The tests are conclusive. She died of an infusion of coniine, C8H17N,
_per os_ or hypodermically. Puncture makes syringe theory conclusive as
coniine administered _per os_ would be remarked by the patient. Smells
like mouse urine. Also acts locally as a caustic. Burning the mouth.
Itching of the throat. Dizziness. Nausea. Tormenting thirst. Paralysis
of the sural muscles.... The patient had none of these symptoms?”
He turned toward Cub Sterling questioningly. So did every other man in
the room. Cub’s “No” was verbal as well as muscular.
“You see,” the leonine head rolled heavily, “one and one-half to two
grains administered hypodermically would be fatal ... in a very short
time ... before a patient would have the agony symptoms penetrate to the
drug deadened nerve centers. Before she could rouse herself the
paralysis of the peripheral endings of the motor nerves had set in; also
the deadening of the sensory nerves had begun. The dominant action,
however, is upon the motor system. Death ensued from paralysis of
respiration.”
He stopped to draw breath and no man interrupted. Toxicology was only a
branch of the science upon which this man was an authority.
Dr. Heddis continued: “All organs appeared normal. The stomach content,
the organs rich in blood ... liver, spleen, kidneys, lungs ... appeared
healthy. But they ... all ... responded positively to the solubility,
crystallization and Melzer’s tests.”
Prissy could stand the tension no longer. He screamed, “Of what plant is
coniine the active principal?”
“Hemlock!”
“The fatal hemlock!” Dr. Harrison’s voice was heavy as he quoted:
“‘Then Socrates lay down upon his back and the person who had
administered the poison went up to him and examined for a little time
his feet and legs and then squeezing his foot strongly, asked whether
he felt him.’”
Dr. Heddis, who never had any trouble understanding Harrison, also knew
his Plato. He nodded and continued:
“‘Socrates replied that he did not. He then did the same to his legs,
and proceeding upwards in this way, showed us that he was cold and
stiff, and he afterwards approached him and said to us that when the
effect of the poison reached the heart Socrates would depart....’”
Heddis threw out his hands helplessly.
Princeton, who was weak upon the classics, spoke.
“Sinister!” he breathed heavily.
“Used to be used for whooping cough,” Cub Sterling clipped gruffly.
The information, for the shadow of a second before Dr. Heddis began
speaking again, made the pupils of Hoffbein’s eyes dilate slightly. Bear
Sterling’s eyes were pin points needling themselves past the grave
figure of MacArthur and into the long face of Heddis, who continued:
“Can be prepared synthetically by means of the same cadaveric alkaloid,
or ptomaine, that is formed in putrefaction of cadavers, that is,
cadaverine or penta-methylene-diamine.”
Hoffbein began to squirm slightly.
“The injection, C8H17N (_Conium maculatum_), presumably combined with
lactic acid is colorless and gradually turns yellow and brown in the
air.”
Dr. Barton rose and leaned close to Dr. Heddis’ ear.
“In your opinion would the person who gave this ... drug ... require a
knowledge of chemistry?”
Dr. Heddis pressed his plump thumb into his cheek.
“I can’t say, definitely. But ... all that a man needs to know of
dynamite to destroy a city is that it will explode. Rathbone is checking
supply sources, I understand. I’m not hopeful....”
He shrugged his thick shoulders.
“A medical student with a flare for toxicology could have made it
synthetically. Anybody with a medical background could....”
“Then I suggest,” Dr. Harrison’s voice was patiently fighting the rising
tension, “that we separate and think it over privately until after
lunch. Men under a strain as long as this has been upon Ethridge and Dr.
MacArthur are not at their mental best ... you both need rest; you have
borne up magnificently.... Let’s re-convene here at two, gentlemen?”
Dr. Heddis turned from the door:
“If you need me, MacArthur....”
Dr. Hoffbein blocked his exit. “One question before we go. Is there much
hysteria on the ward?”
“Nothing visible,” Cub Sterling snapped. “There is tension of course.”
A terrible desire to get away from it all for just fifteen minutes ...
to forget! ... to run away and rest ... made Cub Sterling walk through
the ground floor of his clinic and start down the accident room steps
toward Otto’s.
Halfway down he hesitated.
Three minutes later he walked through Ward B, ascertained from a student
nurse that Dr. James was at lunch and Dr. Mattus still with the
students. Then he opened the door of Room Two.
Rested, relaxed eyes, whose black shadows had disappeared, whose violet
shades sung against the white pillows, turned peacefully toward his
measuring brown ones.
The girl took a cigarette from between her lips and began:
“I slept like a lamb. My leg doesn’t hurt. I told the interne a nurse
brought me the cigarettes and they quieted my nerves, so your shirt-tail
is clear. She let me keep them.... I’ve been thinking a lot. Look here!
Today is Tuesday! There is absolutely no sense keeping me here,
forever....”
Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior, closed the door sharply and strode over
to the bed. His features were flattening. His dark curly hair was
dishevelled. His voice had its “’Night!” quality.
“You are my patient and you are not to get out of that bed until I say
so. I know today is Tuesday just as well as you do. Possibly better!
What you seem never to realize is that I am a tremendously busy man. A
Physician-in-Chief works! You are not the only patient in this hospital
... but God knows you are the most petulant! Spending all your days
lying there thinking up problems to hound me with! Tying yourself in
knots of complications, instead of realizing you are a damned lot
luckier than you deserve!”
Her mouth had been contracting slowly. When Cub stopped for breath she
opened it quickly and began:
“You may be right about the luck, Doctor Sterling. But one thing
medicine has failed completely to teach you is that people without money
still have pride! Do you think I’ve enjoyed lying here for ninety-six
hours having you throw up to me that the Attorney-General will pay my
bills? Do you? There is a rumor that the Attorney-General is going to be
in the next Cabinet. I was riding with him to try and find out. If I had
found out, I’d have had a scoop big enough to pay all the damned-old
bills you care to sling at me....
“Well ... I didn’t find out! But that doesn’t keep me from ‘growing the
bills.’ I’ve got to hold my job to meet them and I’ve got to get out to
do it! And all the medical hysterics you could ever throw doesn’t change
the facts. I....”
Her voice broke unexpectedly and she covered her head with a pillow.
Under the sheet Cub could see her body beginning to stiffen.
He reached over gently and took the cigarette from her fingers. Then he
looked around for an ash-tray, saw none, and vacantly placed the
cigarette between his own lips. The harassment of the morning had
drained from his face. A deep concern replaced it.
His voice was bantering and slow:
“Looks like the phlebitis is traveling to your mind, little Salscie.
Let’s take it step by step. The job; it’s intact. The doctor who asked
me to take you in has been talking to the City Editor about you every
day. Mistake was I ordered no visitors and no flowers and so you thought
they had abandoned you. You may stay a month so far as they are
concerned. The job will be there when you get back. If you stay a month,
probably by then our friction may have worn itself out and you’ll begin
to see how nice I really am. Want to try?”
The pillow remained inert, but the feet and legs began to relax. Cub cut
his eye over the body and began talking again. He decided silently that
when the breasts stopped rising, he’d quit talking....
He took the cigarette from his lips and moistened them:
“About the bills, I’ve been a rotter. I should have told you that the
paper was paying them, or the hospital, or ... but I was pushed into the
situation uninformed. I didn’t know whether you were the king’s mistress
or the governor’s. I didn’t care a damn! And then some terribly,
horribly important situations arose in the hospital and instead of
thinking the thing out, I bungled it.”
The heaving in the breasts became slower, and Cub said:
“About the bills, I’ll do whatever you want me to. The hospital will
take your note, or I’ll lend you the money myself. There is only one
thing I will not do. I _will not_ let you walk out of this hospital
until I am absolutely sure that you are perfectly well. So make up your
mind to that! I’m sorry if I’ve been cruel.... I didn’t mean to!
Probably I’m just too stupid to be kind, Salscie!”
The heaves died completely. He sat absolutely silent.
With her left hand she caught the edge of the pillow case and pulled the
pillow beside her upon the bed. Her eyes looked straight and completely
into his. Her voice was contrite and admiring:
“You are the first man who ever offered to lend me money and didn’t paw
me at the same time!”
Cub laughed heartily, and then snapped:
“Maybe that’s because I’m stupid!”
Her dimples danced and then she sobered.
“When I’m well, will you come to see me...?”
Cub held her eyes to his and nodded emphatically.
“Whenever you say I may! As often as you’ll let me!”
She began lowering her lids and filled the silence with words:
“Really?”
Cub sat very still and curiosity made her raise her eyes to his again.
When they were safely locked, he said, slowly:
“R-e-a-l-l-y!”
The little flecks of sunlight in the room began cascading around her
hair, an inside blush centered in her neck.
Cub sat perfectly still and watched her. She knew he was watching her
and she also knew that something which made her sick with joy was
squirming inside of her. She began speaking desperately and with
frightful haste:
“We might have to hang your legs out of a window when you come to
dinner. When I get a card table up, there’s not much extra space, you
know ... but ... oh, by the way ... could you steal a knife and fork
from the doctors’ dining room, do you think? Not steal, but....”
Cub laughed joyously.
Her face was sober.
He said, “Cigarettes, a knife and fork, ... anything else, Salscie?”
“Yes, Cub. What’s the trouble you spoke about in the hospital?”
The banter slipped from his features and his left shoulder began to
rise.
“Nothing for you to worry about. Just ... some ... friction.”
She took her right hand from under the covers and reached over and
caught his.
“Is it me?”
His eyes met hers and he increased his pressure on the hand.
“No! You can’t cause everything, Salscie!”
Then he rose abruptly.
“I’d better get back, though. Also I’ll make a survey of the knife and
fork situation. That pack of cigarettes will be gone by tonight, won’t
it?”
She lay back among the pillows and nodded slowly.
Cub beat his way through the singing air and closed the door securely
behind him.
»IV«
The First Doll
Bear Sterling hurried back to take a look at his brain tumor. He had
stopped for a few words with Cub, but Cub had insisted that he must get
back to his clinic and relieve Mattus. So after finishing with the brain
tumor, which was coming along nicely, Bear went to his own office, shut
the door, lay down upon a couch and went to sleep.
There was a crisis ahead. He needed a nap.
Dr. Barton did his rounds, discussed three unusual children with his
resident, did as much work and appeared as natural as possible for an
hour, and then filled his pipe and began the process of elimination on
the evidence.
Dr. Harrison had a fifteen minute survey with his resident; afterward
locked himself up in his laboratory and settled down to a “thinking
through.”
Hoffbein returned to his clinic and tried to behave as though nothing
had happened. His consultant and resident nearly died of excitement.
Dr. MacArthur cleared his desk and endeavored to clear his mind. He had
just rung for his secretary and prepared to go upstairs and lie down in
a vacant interne room and get some rest, when Prissy Paton and Princeton
Peters slipped in and closed the door behind them.
“Can you give us a minute, MacArthur?” Peters’ voice was sepulchral.
Prissy stood in the background and looked as if he were going to cry.
“Certainly. What’s on your minds? Sit down.”
They sat upon the edges of the chairs.
“Well?”
“Go on, Peters, and tell him,” Prissy prompted in his treble.
Princeton’s eyes took on their purple mist and he began:
“Dear MacArthur, what we are about to tell you is drawn out of us by our
great love for the Elijah Wilson ... and for you. We feel you must know,
and we could not tell you in front of Bear. It would have killed him.”
“What is it? Get to the point.”
“Last night at midnight, Dr. Paton and I were coming up the corridor
from Woman’s Clinic ... I had been to see about the eyes of the
president of the Woman’s College ... sudden attack ... and Ethridge came
out of the door of Medicine Clinic just ahead of us.”
Dr. MacArthur put his hands under his desk and gripped his knees. His
voice, however, was perfectly calm, as he replied.
“You must have been mistaken, Dr. Peters. Ethridge said he was in his
rooms.”
“That is the saddest part. We heard him say it! And we could not both be
mistaken about Ethridge’s back. His queer walk, MacArthur. One shoulder
higher than the other.... And we both saw it.”
“But you say yourself that neither of you saw his face, Dr. Peters.”
“You are quite right,” Prissy purred, “we did not see his face ... but I
would swear upon my mother’s Bible that it was he.”
“I’ll ask him,” MacArthur’s voice was decisive.
“Please, MacArthur, don’t act hastily! It would be futile to ask _him_,
and if it were not for the horrible slur upon the hospital....”
Princeton’s pleading was so intense that he did not note Dr. MacArthur’s
silent anger, but Prissy sensed it.
“You must get some rest, MacArthur,” he soothed. “Come on Peters,” and
at the door he finished. “Great decisions must be made and we shall not
meet them unprepared.”
Miss Evelina Kerr, student nurse, lay prone upon her bed, sobbing
bitterly, silently, rackingly. Outside her door a supervisor from
Medicine Clinic, off duty at the time, sat erect in a straight back
chair, reading one of Edgar Wallace’s novels.
Up and down the hall of the Nurses’ Home voices rose and fell. The
nurses on night shift were awakening. Miss Roenna Kerr, head nurse in
Medicine Clinic, sailed down the polished floor and as her reflection
preceded her, a loud whisper sung.
“Foots!”
The voices ceased, and the doors filled with blond, black,
straw-colored, yellow and red heads in all degrees of disarray. Thirty
pairs of eyes saw her switch her stern to a halt in front of the
supervisor and smile.
“Mattie! How sweet of you to stay by my child!”
Mattie said deferentially:
“Miss Kerr, anything ... anything that I could do!”
Miss Kerr knew Mattie was playing policeman on orders from the
Superintendent of Nurses, but she also knew that Mattie was accustomed
to taking her own orders. Her lips drew to a beautiful firming and she
said huskily:
“Having you in training and upon my staff, Mattie, has been one of the
really great joys of a very trying life!”
Mattie began disintegrating, and Miss Kerr put her hand upon the knob of
her niece’s door and was inside before the supervisor could moisten her
lips.
The room was inky, the dark blue window shade was pulled even with the
sill. Miss Kerr whispered, involuntary, “Evelina!”
Two sobs inverted their explosion. The girl sat up beating the air. Miss
Kerr ignored her agony and began relentlessly:
“This is no time for hysterics. Come on and tell me! What did you tell
them...?”
“Who, Auntie?”
“The General Staff.” Each letter of each word came bitingly.
“Nothing, Aunt Eeenie!”
Miss Kerr threw out her chin, and enunciated carefully:
“No woman can talk to that many men about nothing for half an hour. You
fail to realize Evelina that everything you have you owe to me. Your
training, your education, your clothes, even the straightening of your
teeth I paid for!”
The girl cringed in the blackness. Her voice was subservient:
“I ... I ... know it, Auntie. I swear ... to God ... I didn’t tell them
... and I never will! I’d get thrown out of training ... before ...
I’d....”
Miss Kerr’s words sealed her lips. They beat into her brain:
“A private who accuses his general ... is always court-martialed!”
Then she turned upon her heel and closed the door after her.
For ten minutes the student nurse sobbed dryly. Complete exhaustion then
smothered the sobs. She fell asleep.
In the nurses’ cafeteria the first group were beginning to choose their
lunches. The white uniforms of the graduate nurses and the blue uniforms
of the student nurses with their white collars and cuffs reflected the
glare from the thin curtains at the sunlit windows.
Near a table occupied by four student nurses sat Rose Standish, head
nurse in the accident room. Her small ivory face was buried in a volume
of “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and she guided the teaspoons of
gelatine and whipped cream into her mouth by a sense of feeling, not
sight. Her outer eye was transferring to her inner one the charm of a
mind drenched in the world’s great love.
The student nurse with a raucous Kansas whine was saying:
“What’s happened to ’Lina Kerr?”
“I don’t know. Why?” responded a flat Alabama drawl.
“I saw her in the corridor with two supervisors at ten o’clock and
Minnie says they’ve got her locked in her room and won’t let anybody
talk to her. She ... she ... looked frightful.”
“Where have you been for the last week?” a Virginian purred. “Three
people have died on the ward where she has night duty and they all are
trying to blame it on her.”
“Have you lost your mind, Lizzie?” sneered the Alabamian.
“Well, if you don’t believe me, why did you ask me? They had her up
before the General Staff this morning.”
“Honest?”
“Yes. Honest! That’s sweet for her, if you ask me.”
“Jumping Jehosophat! You think she did it?”
“No. Of course not. Dr. Cub Sterling was the doctor on all of the
cases.”
At the mention of his name the conversation she had just been hearing
re-echoed in Rose Standish’s mind and she looked up just in time to
catch the shrug of the girl’s thin shoulders and her smirk.
“Did he?”
“How should I know?” the girl shrugged again.
Rose Standish closed her book and rose. She wanted air, and plenty of
it. Ever since the second year of her training she had had a very secret
passion for Cub Sterling. Ever since that time he caught her on the
stairway behind the pharmacy kissing ... she blushed when she thought
about it ... Tony Watson, one of his internes ... and never told
anybody, and then when Tony had pneumonia and died, he had let her help
to nurse him and ... be with him ... at the last.