ward who had received the toy in the night, began crying in her sleep.
She had been disturbed by the lightning, and her moans made the women
shivery.
Several of the women called out to her and Mrs. Witherspoon’s lisping
(her teeth again removed), “Alwite bavvy, don cwy,” struck Miss Standish
as highly amusing. She slipped her thermometer around and laughed. Miss
Kerr, the student nurse, flopped down the last window and went to the
moaning child.
While she was walking down the ward there came another flash of
lightning, a sudden hissing, and the lights went out. It was followed by
a panicky silence and then the hysterical laughter of Mrs. Witherspoon.
Rose Standish ducked as if she had been hit, and as she ducked something
began choking her about the neck. She spit her thermometer upon the bed
and began tugging at the horrible pulling. A thing, like a brick, hit
her upon the head as she tried to sit up, and she thought, “it can’t be
the murderer, he only uses hypodermics,” and the lights went up, while
Mrs. Witherspoon was still laughing, and she saw Miss Kerr standing
between their beds, and reaching for her thermometer.
In a moment she understood that the sash of her kimona had become
twisted about her neck, and it was the book she had been reading and
stuck upon the edge of her pillow which had fallen ... and it was all
absurd. All, that is, except the look in Miss Kerr’s eyes.
The surprised look, when she saw Miss Standish was still alive! Her
tongue was so dry she couldn’t speak and a horrible nausea began rising
within her, but Mrs. Witherspoon drew the girl’s evil eyes when she
demanded that her bed be fixed _now_.
Miss Kerr went for the sheets and Miss Standish lay down and turned her
face toward the window and tried to forget it all. She placed one of her
thin hands at the base of her brain and began massaging her neck. This
was no way to do. Get frightened at a little thing like a book hitting
you. A person who lost her nerve over such things wasn’t fit to look for
mice in a dark pantry let alone clear the reputation of Dr. Cub Sterling
and solve the terror of the Elijah Wilson. Forget it all for a few
minutes and remember the routine a student nurse should be following,
now.
Of course the changing of Mrs. Witherspoon’s bed was throwing everything
slightly behind time, but that should be finished in a minute, and she
turned over to watch the girl make the bed. Her technique was excellent
and she was a swift worker. Seemed sure of herself.
Even from the back, Rose knew she didn’t like her. And never would. Miss
Kerr turned to finish the pulses. Then she began taking the flowers out
of the ward for the night. She took the pink roses which the clowns had
sent to the circus woman, and the nasturtiums the children had brought
the fat woman, and Mrs. Witherspoon’s tube rose ... thank goodness ...
and then she came back and gave out the final round of bed-pans, the
final glasses of water, and went for her medicine tray.
The little girl had gone back to sleep, but down the ward a gray old
woman, whose face was like cracked rock, was breathing with the horrible
labor of a heart attack. Rose Standish started to call the student nurse
and tell her to get Mattus right away, and then she decided that it was
about time she began to remember that she was a patient on the ward and
not a nurse.
Miss Kerr returned with the medicine tray. She gave Mrs. Witherspoon her
hypodermic, and almost as a sponge does water, the withered body soaked
it up, and she fell into a deep slumber. The woman with the thyroid
insufficiency had her sleeping potion and began the long slow breathing
of a laboring body.
The rain had broken the tension and the women were drifting off before
the lights were dimmed. It, with the aid of the drugs, of course, was
soothing and lulling them into oblivion. The long, slow torrents fell in
strips outside the window and drowned out the labored breathing of the
woman with the heart attack.
Rose lay perfectly still, so still she was almost drifting herself. Miss
Kerr had reached the bed in which the heart patient lay and at last
realized her condition ... a tuned ear could have noted it down the
corridor ... she turned and walked prissily off the ward ... not
hurrying, and with her hips flat ... and called Dr. Mattus. Rose could
hear her cooing out the dying woman’s condition, and gathered that he
was coming up.
In a few minutes he appeared and after a quick glance began pumping
digitalis into her ... Rose could have told the nurse to do that! Then
when she rallied, and after the lights had been dimmed, he came by her
bed and said:
“All right, Miss Standish?”
“Perfectly. Thank you.”
He took her pulse and said:
“Good heart you’ve got. Dr. Sterling, Senior, said you could have a
sedative if you buckle. Ring for it, if you want it.”
“What’ll it be, doctor?”
He crinkled his long nose and sniffed, “Poison! Little nurses mustn’t
ask big questions! ’Night!”
His smile was broad, and forced.
By ten ... Rose looked at her radio-light watch ... the ward had “bedded
down” and the rain had diminished to occasional drippings. Everything
was cool and still. Miss Kerr had settled down to doing her fever charts
at the desk. Occasionally, she turned and peered into the darkened ward,
and Rose felt her looking at her bed, inquiringly.
She lay on her back, stretched her legs, put her arms at her sides,
little girl fashion, and began to breathe deeply. Perhaps if she did
that for thirty counts, she would drift off to sleep. If she buckled.
... she’d show ’em. Begin to get some rest ... plenty of it ... it had
been a long day ... a trying evening ... now everything was peaceful and
everybody was beginning to sleep.
But if she dared to go to sleep, why couldn’t the person ... whoever it
was ... come while she was asleep and ... and....
She reached for her glass of water and took a drink. Her lips were so
dry it hurt to open them. This was foolish. How was her heart doing? She
took her pulse and discovered it was 106. Perhaps she had better have a
potion after all.
She looked toward the desk. Miss Kerr wasn’t there!
»VI«
The Second Doll
At nine o’clock Dr. Harrison entered the hospital through the accident
room door and started up the main corridor. The last of the nurses and
internes were returning from breakfast, the morning sun as they passed
the occasional windows was picking each face out of its oblivion and
then throwing it back again.
Dr. Harrison shivered. The faces looked as the faces did upon the
streets of every city in the United States the morning after the
Lindbergh baby had been found....
The cynically young, the frightened vacant, the intelligent, the eager,
the stupid, all reflected the knowledge that Rose Standish was dead.
“A nurse died last night,” the stupid faces, the childish faces, the
vacant faces reflected, and as the intelligence increased, the horror in
the eyes grew....
Upon the internes and residents they showed:
“A nurse was murdered last night.”
And with an increasing frequency he saw eyes which knew:
“She was murdered in Cub Sterling’s Clinic.”
He passed the entrance to his own clinic, and then retraced his
footsteps. His duty was to MacArthur, but his first duty was to suppress
as much staff hysteria as possible. With the staff in such a condition,
it was only a question of hours before the patients, all over the
hospital....
His resident was standing beside the elevator upon the first floor. He
turned and Dr. Harrison noted the first, second, and then a third horror
in his eyes.
“’Morning, Wheeler,” his voice was calm and measured.
“Good morning, Doctor Harrison. Do you know?”
“About the nurse? I do.”
“No, sir. About Doctor Bear.”
Dr. Harrison turned his searching brown eyes into the man’s gray ones.
“What?”
The resident met the glance and responded:
“Pneumonia. Bilateral. Cub is with him. Diagnosis confirmed. Brought him
into hospital on a stretcher about two hours ago. He’s in Medicine
Clinic now ... hopeless....”
Dr. Harrison staggered for the first time in his medical life.
“They murdered him! The dogs!”
He turned from the elevator and walked out of his clinic and down the
corridor toward the Medicine Clinic. He walked calmly, like a man going
to his execution and convinced of his innocence.... That heart attack
was responsible, as sure as death itself, Hoffbein, Peters and Paton had
killed ... his best, his very best friend....
His agony was so acute that the passing faces with their increasing
hysteria seemed natural.
Turning to Mattus, Cub Sterling said:
“I’d better look in on Miss Merriweather, in case her father telephones
today. Then you can find me with Dr. Sterling, if you need me.”
He turned from Ward B and walked into Room Two and closed the door. That
shade onto the Ward was still lowered. He had lowered it himself the
first night he brought the cigarettes.
He and Sally Ferguson were completely alone.
She was smoking a cigarette. The room swam with pinking air and Cub
leaned against the door jam and snapped:
“How’s the leg since they took the bandages off? All right?”
She ignored the question and said:
“I just woke up! Why did you give me those pills last night?”
He walked toward the bed, and the horror of the night receded and a wild
happiness suffused his features.
“Don’t you know, Salscie?”
“To make me ... sleep?”
“Would you have slept ... without...?”
He leaned over her and kissed her twice. Completely and reachingly.
She burrowed her head between his collar and his neck and whispered:
“Did you...?”
He laid the weight of his head upon hers and she moaned and brought her
lips within reach again.
Cub drained them a third time and tucking his head between her breasts
said:
“God I need that, darling! I’ve been through hell ... hell ... red hot
hell!”
Then he jerked his head up and bored his eyes into hers. His voice was
wild and heavy.
“Whatever happens, whatever anybody tells you, whatever comes ... you
must promise me, Salscie, that you’ll believe in me ... that you’ll
trust me ... and know that I’ve wanted you all my life ... and when all
of this works out ... I’m going to ... live with you....”
Her body stiffened and she snatched her eyes out of his. Her voice was
hard and narrow.
“Cub Sterling, I wouldn’t ... ever ... live with you! At last I see why
women have children ... why they want to belong....”
All the angularity went out of him. He reached over and gathered her
into his arms. His voice curled and nestled in her ear.
“You’ll have them, Salscie! Lots of little Sterlings!”
Outside the loud speaker began:
“Docterr Ste-earling, Junyior, Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-arling,
Junyior. Calling Doct-terr....”
They wilted apart, but their eyes still held and Cub said, softly and
definitely:
“My father’s ill. Very ill. The hospital’s in a terrible stew. I may not
get to see you for a couple of days. Be good until I do! Take care of
yourself! Don’t be ferocious to anybody, Salscie! Promise? I’ll tell
Mattus to let you have your clothes, and try sitting up if you like.
Think you’ll need some more pills tonight ... darling?”
She blushed and smiled slowly. Cub took a box from his pocket and gave
her two veronal tablets.
Then he leaned over and ordered:
“Kiss me quick, Salscie! Sophie’d better kiss me, too!”
At the door he turned and barked:
“Remember! This place is full of tales.... Trust me?”
“Till death us do part, Cub darling!”
Dr. Henry MacArthur sat at his desk and awaited the arrival of the
staff. He sat perfectly erect, dreadfully calm, with the hopeless
heroism of the stone blind. His hands were relaxed upon his knees.
Lifting them to cradle his head would require such an enormous effort
... mentally and physically....
He was as changed from the man who had lain in bed two nights before and
enjoyed scotch highballs as if he had spent twenty years in Siberia. The
hair at the temples looked grayer and the face was marble in its
emotions. They came separately, and filled its furrows. Bitter self
recrimination. He had sent a perfectly innocent woman to her death. A
mere child. He had allowed her to go up, pass through hell and die ...
for his honor, Cub Sterling’s reputation, and the Elijah Wilson
Hospital. And to die so uselessly, so bravely, so quietly.
And the self-recrimination was followed by a nobility which made him
beautiful, as the world thought King Albert beautiful while he was
bleeding over Belgium.
Bleeding over the tremendous heroism of human beings. Over the cool
straight bravery of quiet people. Over the fragile littleness of her
still body. Over the sense of still living that her small ivory face had
held when he and Cub Sterling and Dr. Bear’s assistant were leaning over
her body, under the glaring light of that autopsy table.
It had been like bending over a plucked magnolia blossom, on a summer
morning. There was a spiritual fragrance about her as poignant as the
perfume of magnolias. A feeling of sheer beauty, wasted....
If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the exquisite curve
of that child’s small rounded breast and the nauseating sense of having
stuck a knife in it, which came over him!
An Edith Cavell, a Florence Nightingale, a Jeanne d’Arc, and he had
stood in her presence alive ... and dead....
And all of it had been so futile. But as certain as death itself was the
knowledge ... within his own mind ... that Cub Sterling had had nothing
to do with it. That Cub Sterling could not have stood beside him in that
autopsy room a few scant hours ago and the sense of horror and
helplessness have so entirely gripped them. And it did grip ... both of
them.
He started to telephone for Cub to come to him now and then he
remembered about Bear, and his head ... for the first time since he had
been Director of the Elijah Wilson Hospital ... fell into his cupped
hands, while the door into the corridor stood wide open.
Caesar was dead, Napoleon was dead, Osler was dead, Socrates was dead,
Halsted was dead and Bear Sterling was dying....
Dying because of overwork and a bad heart. Sacrificed to his profession
by his colleagues! That heart attack yesterday, coupled with the cold
had done it.
All the great men were dead or dying.... Coniine....
He turned over Cub Sterling’s testimony concerning the death of Miss
Standish, and stared vacantly at the words. Somewhere, at this very
minute, there was walking, still free, about the Elijah Wilson Hospital,
probably laughing and talking with other patients, a nurse, a doctor ...
a man ... a woman ... a murderer....
Dr. MacArthur rose and walked to the far window through which the warm
spring sun was shining. He must pull himself together. His duty was not
to his emotional beliefs concerning men and their motives. Above all
things he must be fair. His duty and theirs was to the hospital and
within the next five minutes he must get himself in such perfect control
that he could compel them to see it.
The opportunity of the hospital to be of benefit to humanity for the
next fifty years depended entirely upon his ability to hold his staff
together this morning. To force these exceptionally capable men to think
calmly ... and wisely.
He closed his eyes and allowed the sun to penetrate through the lids. A
soft spring breeze floated in the opened window. A living, gentle breeze
which foretold all the wealth of future living in flowers and
fragrances; which expressed as clearly as Chopin might have, how he felt
about the small, slim body of Rose Standish.
It seared him like a sirocco. Yesterday morning, she had stood there
with just such a breeze blowing. Yesterday morning it had promised her
summer, too ... and today.... He turned his back resolutely to the
window and still stood with his eyes closed.
The sun began relaxing the muscles at the base of his brain and then he
seemed suddenly sane. Her death had been like those of the officers in
the Great War who had jumped out of the trenches and walked up and down
to give their men courage....
He returned to his desk and calmly began planning what must be covered
at this meeting, and what witnesses must be called. Cub, if he could
leave his father, otherwise his testimony must suffice. The day white
nurse, the night pupil nurse, Miss Kerr’s niece, and Mattus’ impression
of the patient when he last saw her. Then it would be wise to ask Dr.
Heddis to come over and report upon the autopsy findings.
The lack of sleep was telling upon him. He had entirely forgotten about
questioning the orderly, William. He rang for his secretary and gave her
the orders.
When Dr. Barton’s squared frame filled the door it brought with it a
sense of relief. Queer how sane associating with children made a man.
Almost immediately he was followed by Hoffbein, Peters and Paton ...
together. They had just settled themselves when Dr. Harrison strode in.
There was an armor of righteousness about him that dazzled. Dr.
MacArthur had never seen Harrison this way before. Like some great
patriarch of Biblical fame girded for battle.
When they were all seated, Dr. Barton and Dr. Harrison exchanged
monosyllabic diagnoses upon Dr. Bear and Dr. MacArthur read their faces.
Peters, Hoffbein, and Paton missed the discussion. They were funereal,
self-righteous and pious, respectively.
A nurse was dead. They had gone on record opposing placing her in the
position where she might be murdered. Dr. MacArthur had sacrificed her
to save Cub Sterling’s reputation.
At half-past six when Dr. MacArthur had notified Dr. Peters, Dr. Peters
had telephoned Dr. Paton right away and intoned “The sort of thing that
purifies a man,” and after that their conversation had been long,
gossipy ... and horrified. Princeton had been propped against his
pillows, his feet glued to a white rubber hot water bottle and a deep
purple corded silk dressing gown thrown over his still firm shoulders.
His wife was abroad with Mrs. Paton.
Prissy, whose telephone was as much a part of his bedtime equipment as
his nightshirt, had lain perfectly flat upon his bed and with their
decisions his “seven months gone” bay-window rose and fell. Cushioned
upon what had once been his chest was a French telephone.
Their first decision had been to tell MacArthur “right out” that they
had to have a private meeting without either of the Sterlings present,
and decide something.
As Prissy’s upper teeth and Princeton’s lower ones were removed for the
night, their vehemence had seemed awfully mushy to the telephone
operator when she cut in for Paton’s resident.
But when the discourse was resumed Princeton had said:
“I shell inten’ to shay, at the meetin’ we are demandin’, Paton.”
Prissy’s front had given a proud heave.
“That we cannot have our poshishun jepodized any longer. Action” ... the
bay-window rose ... “must be taken immediately. The powice—”
Five minutes had been lost over that word. Neither of them could
persuade the telephone to accept it.
“The law to intervene,” Princeton finally substituted.
“I agwee entirely, Peshurs. I’ll stan’ behin’ you, straight through.”
Prissy’s offer even in the noontide sun would have come in a high treble
and over the telephone and under the circumstances it didn’t sound very
convincing.
However, after they had both bathed, both felt her death had purified
them, both inserted their teeth, both had called MacArthur and requested
a meeting minus the Sterlings.
It had left them a little shaky ... but now that Dr. MacArthur was
beginning to speak, Prissy nodded to Princeton who tiptoed to the door
and closed it. They felt they had been justified in the action they had
taken.
Neither Sterling was present.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. MacArthur’s voice was measured and low, “Rose Standish
is dead. She was murdered last night while a patient in Bed 11, Ward B,
of Medicine Clinic. An injection of coniine. She went on that ward to
save your reputation and mine. To lift the hospital out of terror ...
and she is dead, and we are....”
“I was against it from the first,” Princeton began clearing himself with
the rapidity of a condemned schoolboy.
Nobody paid him the slightest attention. Prissy blushed, and Hoffbein
squirmed.
“We are faced,” Dr. MacArthur’s blue eyes had taken on their fighting
steeliness, “with the blackest day the Elijah Wilson has ever seen. With
the fact that no patient anywhere is safe in any bed of the institution
... with the responsibility of catching a murderer within our walls. A
person who has committed two untraceable, two traceable murders.
D’y’see? Gentlemen, I ask your advice.”
Princeton Peters and Prissy Paton stared at Dr. Hoffbein and he nodded
... with his eyelids, and Princeton rose.
“To put it plainly, straightly and to the point, MacArthur, it is one
thing to protect your professional colleagues, but after all our
Hippocratic oath binds us _first_ to the protection of our patients.
“I’m glad you called this meeting as we advised, and have given us an
opportunity of speaking frankly. Murder, automatically, cancels loyalty!
Call in the police immediately is the advice of myself, Dr. Paton and
Dr. Hoffbein.”
His peach-blossom face was brick red and it was the fury with which Dr.
Harrison rose that, at a distance of ten feet, scared Dr. Peters into
his chair.
“You might just as well know, Dr. Peters,” his brown eyes were live
coals, “that this meeting was not called without the Sterlings
purposely. Barton and I were dead against it, as was MacArthur. Dr.
MacArthur was intensely kind in his opening speech about the number of
murders which have been committed in this hospital within the last week.
They are five.”
“Stop, Harrison. Please stop!” Dr. MacArthur had risen from his chair,
but he might have been a fly upon the distant mantelpiece for the effect
he produced.
“Sorry. I can’t stop. They might just as well know it! Call in your
police! Call them in now! And as sure as Christ was crucified I’ll swear
out a warrant for each of you, Hoffbein, Peters and Paton, for the
murder of Bear Sterling, now dying of pneumonia complicated by the heart
attack which you, famous colleagues and a world-renowned psychiatrist
caused by your foul insinuations yesterday.
“If you value your international reputations as much as your
self-exhibitions in the last fifteen years indicate, the police are out
of the question.
“Now let’s get down to business.”
For fully four minutes after he had finished no man in the room spoke.
No man could. For fifteen, twenty, perhaps thirty years none of them had
ever heard Dr. Harrison raise his voice above a conversational tone,
never had seen him for one-quarter of a split second lose complete
control of himself or of a situation, never had heard him judge a man
without charity.
And the three he condemned were too seared to be angry, too frightened
to be resentful, too dazed to be amazed.
He had spoken the truth ... and they knew it.
Dr. Barton, as a nurse might work upon children upset by an explosion,
took his pipe from his mouth, and began speaking. He said:
“Dr. MacArthur, I think it is your advice that we need, suh.”
The thing that cowed Dr. Peters, Paton and Hoffbein, was that Dr.
Harrison had suffered no relapse. He sat firmly stroking his beard and
looking alternately at each of them.
Dr. MacArthur, his blue eyes firmly defiant, began:
“The hospital has never been in so delicate a situation. I repeat that
the matter must be handled with secrecy, tact, and sanity.
“You see, gentlemen, this hospital was endowed, it has been perpetuated
for, and is famous as, a great teaching institution. When through any
clumsiness of ours we have more beds than patients the hospital is
doomed. Its great advantage has always been more patients than beds.
D’y’see?”
Prissy’s green, Princeton’s lavender and Hoffbein’s liquid eyes were
glued upon his face. Dr. Barton’s shoulders were hunched attentively.
“Now if we were to turn this situation over to the police, regardless of
Dr. Harrison’s statements, we would automatically spread into every ward
of every department, every newspaper in the country, the superstition of
every negro within a thousand miles, the means of ruining, absolutely,
your work, mine and that of all the medical men now resident and student
here.
“Murder is a very horrible situation, but dooming the future of at least
a thousand capable men is, in my opinion, worse, all oaths,
notwithstanding. D’y’see?