can you catch a murderer in a hospital? You are right, Snod. Somebody
around here is crazy as a tick. And lots of people are lying. One thing
you got to remember is you are up against professional liars. All nurses
and doctors are professional liars. Didn’t one tell me my mother was
‘doing nicely’ when she had been dead an hour? So watch everybody in the
same way you watch a spy.
“He’s also covering somebody that everybody else believes guilty. I
think I know whom he is covering. But that’ll wait. He suspects that
head nurse and her niece. That’s plain as day. And he didn’t tell the
truth about why he thinks she is doing it. There’s somebody behind them,
in his mind.”
He stopped for a moment to draw breath and Miss Parkins flipped her
cigarette and said:
“Matt, I’d like a gun, if you don’t mind?”
“You scared, Lil?”
“No. I’m never scared. Especially when I have a gun.”
“Don’t be a fool, Lil.” He put his big square hand over her capable one.
“They’ll strip you to the bone when you go through that accident racket.
A gun is out of the question. You’ll have Snod.” He motioned to Mr.
Smooty.
She smiled but she wasn’t reassured.
“He is slow as hell about wiping dishes when you are having a Sunday
night supper. I couldn’t get him out of that kitchen till I’d been dead
hours.”
Smooty’s green eyes took on life for the first time since he had entered
the room. He said.
“A hospital’s duty is to protect everybody. I’ll be a member of a
hospital staff in twenty minutes, Lil.”
She shrugged her square shoulders and her limpid eyes begged.
“The murderer is a member of the hospital staff, Snod. He’ll beat you to
it.”
Higgins intervened.
“For God’s sake, Lil! Hold on to yourself!”
“It’s those damn dolls,” she laughed.
Higgins smiled strongly into her eyes and threw his overcoat over the
dolls. “There’s enough hysteria around here as it is. Don’t add to it.
Unless Snod has something to say I guess you might just as well sneak
out and do your fainting fit. Want me to send you flowers when you get
sick, little girl?”
“Hush, Matt. Flowers are not funny in this case.”
She opened her handbag and took out three hundred dollars in fifty
dollar bills and counted them carefully. Beside them she laid the cards
of a speakeasy on West 11th Street and of one on 44th. She opened the
zipper center of the black alligator bag and took from it her
identification card with the agency and the picture of a man in an
officer’s uniform of the British Intelligence. Near these she spread a
large white silk handkerchief into which she scooped the outlay, and
then removed from her wrist a large sapphire and diamond wrist watch.
She closed the bag, first counting the money remaining. One dollar bill
and three dimes and a nickel. Then she tied the contents of the bag in
the large silk handkerchief and handed it to Higgins.
He took it carefully and put it in his coat pocket.
“Going, Lil?” His gray eyes looked up into her limpid ones confidently.
“Now. See you later.”
She opened the door and disappeared.
Miss Evelina Kerr, student night nurse on Ward B, Medicine Clinic, shook
down the thermometer and inserted it into the mouth of the new patient
in Bed 11, with an air of relief, and just a touch of condescension.
“Good evening. Have you remembered your name?”
Miss Lillian Parkins weakly shook her head and her eyes were sad.
Miss Kerr, who had been over the clothes in the locker, knew that the
coat was expensive and the fur good, but that she had no money, so gave
her her “free patient” smile and passed on.
Lillian Parkins lay inert and tried to clear her mind. A long plane
trip, then the terrible strain of appearing ill before the prying eyes
of two internes and that little Jewish resident doctor had left her weak
as dishwater. A touch of straight scotch was what she needed.... It was
damn hard to relax and veil your eyes and yet see everything. Still that
was the game, that was what made the job so ... fascinating!
That girl’s eyes were too close, and there was an ugly sense of triumph
when she had found her in the bed, and a nasty condescension, and a dead
voice, creepy kind of! Somewhere she had seen a woman who moved like
that with a voice like that, a stubborn little mind like that who ...
who ... hands like snakes, or bananas, who ... was it?
She closed her eyes to keep the life out of them, and began to check
cases. On the Leviathan last year, in that Welfare Island group in May,
doing that route collecting for pimps on the Southern circuit? No! None
of those, but somewhere within the last eighteen months....
Ah, she had it. That medium who worked for the hypnotist in the
side-show and peddled dope in the circus. That vicious little adder who
had tried to throw acid in her eyes when she caught her with the goods.
Whew! Lord!
The goose-flesh began to stand out on her arms and legs. That’s who she
was, the same automaton voice, the same kind of little snake, out
working for a python and she had to face her without so much as an
automatic and go to sleep while she was doing it. Not go to sleep. Not
on your life. Feign sleep! Feign sleep for ten hours, and then somehow
manage not to have a real heart attack and pass out honest!
Swell job this was! Lots of fun! If she could get her hands on Matt
Higgins now! Somehow she had to have a word with Snod. And quick!
Around her the monotonous conversation of the ward was droning, but
since she was supposed to be too weak to talk, she closed her mind to
it. Except for the realization that these women were afraid of the
night. Had stood the day, but were afraid of the night and wanted to
tell her about the bed. Wanted desperately to warn her ... somehow. The
lapping conversation and her own preoccupation made her unaware of Miss
Kerr’s return, until she felt the thermometer eased from her lips, and
shivered.
Reptile who moved like that would have a hypodermic in you before you
knew it.
She kept her eyes closed and pretended complete fatigue. Miss Kerr’s
pleasure at her presence seemed to increase. She said briskly and
jubilantly:
“You’ll be around before you know it. Your pulse and temperature are
pretty good, considering. Your medicine will be along in a minute and
then you can have a good night’s sleep.”
Miss Parkins opened her eyes feebly and gave her the fading lily smile.
Miss Kerr returned it with the “miserable object” expression.
But had Miss Lillian Parkins been less of the consummate actress, the
glimpse of Snod Smooty, late of Scotland Yard and the British
Intelligence, now arrayed in the nondescript white coat of a hospital
orderly, and carrying, as a hotel porter might bags, an assortment of
bed-pans, would have shattered her facial control.
He was on the ward before Miss Kerr had seen him. His face was as vacant
as a concrete highway and his voice was as deferential as a butler’s.
“Here you are, Miss.”
The laughter of the women made Miss Kerr ease around, and when her slow
eyes had taken in the situation, her routine mind exploded into wrath,
remarkably spontaneous.
“Who told you to do that? You are not supposed to bring the bed-pans on
the ward. I ... I....”
Smooty swallowed like a hurt child and one pan started slipping toward
the floor. Miss Kerr slunk forward and caught it.
Mrs. Witherspoon spoke up:
“Don’t be upset, Miss Kerr. We understands. And now thet he’s here....”
Miss Kerr looked appraisingly toward Mrs. Witherspoon and tried to deny
her.
A very insistent telephone commanded her attention and threw her routine
existence out of whack. She was told to prepare for a new patient and
spent five minutes explaining to the night superintendent that the bed
was already given to an accident room case and the patient would have
to....
The orderly took advantage of the opportunity and began handing out pans
along the side of the ward where Miss Parkins lay. It was Mrs.
Witherspoon’s, “Pull the curtains. Pull the curtains. Quick!” which gave
him an opportunity to speak to Miss Parkins unobserved.
He said, “How are you?”
“Scared.”
“I’ll watch her, close.”
“Stick to her, Snod. For God’s sake!”
His eyes came to life and strengthened her.
“She won’t do anything tonight. She won’t get around an old pan-handler
like me. If you are scared as you say you are, you must have the....
Here’s a pan!”
He thrust one at her and moved on.
Miss Kerr re-entered the ward and said crisply, “William.”
“Horace, mam,” he corrected as he handed the circus performer her pan.
The girl was disconcerted by the correction.
“Well, it doesn’t matter, really. The thing that matters is that you are
to stay off this ward unless I call you. There is plenty of work for you
in the kitchen. Go down to Ward A and get me a syringe. I’ve already
called Miss Wilson about your coming.”
Snod Smooty looked blankly up at the nurse.
“A hypo syringe?”
“Yes. Of course. Why?”
He thought he detected a slight dilation of her pupils, and replied
carelessly:
“You see, Miss, at St. Giles, in London, we always called enemas
syringes. I jus’ needs to know, you see.”
“Were you there, Horace?”
“I ain’t braggin’ Miss, but I was an orderly there four years. That’s
how come I brought the bed-pans; we done it that way!”
He threw his helpless hands out in an explanatory gesture and shambled
down the corridor.
Miss Evelina Kerr sat down at her desk to regain her control. She should
have gone on with the routine. But she sat down. Things weren’t going so
well. That man was a detective as sure as life and he was lying, and
Aunt Roenna ought to know....
She picked up the telephone and started to take the receiver from the
hook, and then she jumped up and somehow smothered a scream.
Standing over her, peering down into her little, piggish eyes with his
steel-gray slits was a tall, fat man, in a blue uniform with brass
buttons. In his right hand he held a bunch of red American Beauty roses,
and the other was in a side pocket.
Miss Kerr thought he was a policeman and the left hand was upon his
pistol holster. He carefully placed the roses in the elbow of the left
arm, and with his right hand drew her out into the ward. His grip was
strong and heavy.
By that time Miss Kerr had regained her breath. She tried to snatch her
arm away and cringed when she failed.
“What do you want?”
“To shee the night nurse on Ward B.”
“I’m the night nurse.” Her voice still quaked.
Gripping her like a vice, he stuck his thick face into hers and the
stench of his breath reached the whole ward.
“Y’re not Rhosh Standziz! Where is Rosh?”
Then swaying as a top-heavy steamer might when tied to a brittle
mooring, he turned to the ward and announced:
“I’se bin in luz wiz Rosh, scincz ... sincz ... sincz ...” he shook his
head helplessly and the motion seemed to straighten his tongue,
temporarily.... “I just came back from China Station. They said over the
’phone last night Rose was on Ward B.” His voice clouded again. “Sho I
brought her shum r ... r ... rhozes.”
He laid the flowers upon a bed and took Miss Kerr’s face in both of his
hands. By that time every woman on the ward was sitting bolt upright
regardless of her condition. A fly would have sounded like an airplane.
Crushing her face with his hands, he demanded:
“Swhere iz Rosh? Zhu! Phoo! Zhu ain’t Rosh!” and then his voice took on
a hide-and-seek tenor.
And he crushed with more force, and they both swayed.
“Swherah ... iz ... Rosh?”
Lillian Parkins sat like a race horse at the starter. Every time he
crushed the nurse, she thanked him ... silently....
He swayed horribly and they staggered.
He increased his grip and his voice was brutal.
“Stell me! St-ell me! Swhere iz Rosh?”
“Rose is dead!” Miss Kerr’s voice had taken on life at last. Every woman
in the ward heard her remark.
And it was Mrs. Witherspoon’s horrible, scrunching scream that came like
the brakes of a truck after an accident, which shocked the other women
into silence and brought Horace, the new orderly, up the corridor on the
run.
And with that scream the brain of Lieutenant Brady, U.S.N.
disintegrated. He loosened his grip upon the student nurse and flung her
to the floor.
“Rosh iz dead! Dead in a hoshbittle!”
He began skipping around as a child might and singing monotonously,
“Ring aroun’ de Roshy! Rosh’s dead. Rosh’s dead. Ring aroun’ de Roshy.”
Then he caught the approaching Horace out of the corner of his eye and
laughed hollowly.
“Cash me!”
He began rolling under the patients’ beds, playing a literal
hide-and-seek with both the student nurse, who had staggered to her
feet, and the nimble orderly who was saying in a loud voice.
“You are dead drunk! You ... fool!”
The final scramble took place under the bed of Lillian Parkins and Miss
Kerr ran to the telephone to call the night superintendent.
As Snod Smooty caught one foot of the big man and began pulling, Lillian
Parkins leaned over the side of her bed and hissed:
“Don’t let that bitch get within fifteen feet of me! Tell Matt that
examination was worse than being looked over for a harem. If he doesn’t
get me out of here by tomorrow night, I’ll walk out. Get the sailor out
quietly, Snod. He loved that dead nurse.”
Apparently paying no attention, Snod Smooty managed to keep the scramble
loud enough to cover Miss Parkins’ remarks.
He gave the sailor a little jujutsu and had him swaying down the
corridor before Miss Kerr had found the night superintendent. They
disappeared to the sailor’s monotone which had sunk to the note of a
child trying to lull himself to sleep.
“Ring aroun’ de Roshy! Rosh’s dead. Rosh’s dead. Ring aroun’ de Roshy!”
Snod Smooty carried him over his shoulder down the stairs and out of the
side entrance. Upon the curb stone he stood him against a parked
automobile and then socked him under the jaw. As he fell, Snod opened
the automobile door and laid him out upon the back seat to sleep it off.
Snod’s colorless face was tender and old. He wanted a cigarette. Worst
scene he had ever witnessed and he’d seen some hellbenders in his day.
But Lil was as hysterical as any of them.
He shrugged his shoulders and re-entered the building. That was the
trouble with women. They made good detectives, where men were to be
caught, but with women...!
It was Mrs. Witherspoon’s second and blood freezing scream that made Dr.
Mattus close his mind to his own bad heart and forget to button his fly.
The piercing horror of her high agonized wail hung over the corridor
like poison gas. He tore through it and the effort made his knees
tremble.
What was it? What terror had entered her soul?
When he reached her, she was sitting bolt upright, her weak eyes ablaze,
and gazing with fixed horror at a large bunch of American Beauty roses
which lay upon the foot of her bed.
»VIII«
The Control
Matthew Higgins laid down _The Morning Call_ and smiled vaguely. It had
been a long time since he was in the Middle West, and you got out of the
way of remembering it. He finished his coffee, motioned for his check,
paid it, leaned over the bar and said:
“That’s the best coffee roll I ever had outside of Paul’s.”
Otto beamed and cocked his head slowly.
“Fank you! Fen I fus cum to dis country, I vork in Paul’s. Two vyears.”
Matt put his weight in his shoulders and his voice was admiring.
“Why did you come West?”
Otto began wringing his towel helplessly.
“Vell, my vivfe vus humsic, so I tried to make into a Jerman settl’ment
... an’....”
He stood silent a moment. All of his verve wilted.
Higgins interposed, “Any news around town?”
Otto peered over his glasses pleasantly.
“Ve reever made four inchers, las’ night. Eif she continuers....” He
threw out his hands. His face flashed sober and he drew his hands over
his abdomen and said carefully:
“Docturr Bearr Sterlink is ... dyin ... k.”
Matt squared his shoulders and sat straight on the stool. He stretched
his torso upward.
“Great man I guess ... that Bear Sterling! Saved the lives of lots of
people...!”
Otto reached over the counter and began carefully balancing the dishes
and his words.
“Yess. Lots. Lots of people. But even great men half der veak spots....”
Matt Higgins poised a spoon upon the saucer of the cup Otto was lifting.
“What do you mean ... ‘weak spots’...?”
“Vell...,” Otto’s conscience and his philosophy collided. He peered over
his glasses again.
“Du ... did you kno’, Docturr Bearr Sterlink?”
Matt Higgins shook his head definitely.
“By reputation, only. What’s his weak spot?”
Otto closed his lips completely and turned his back. When the dishes
were safely deposited, he said:
“Sum men are veak vid de knife, sum aroun’ de heart, sum like me, aroun’
de stumack...! Sum ven ve are young.... Sum ven ve are studients.... Sum
ven ve are in bed....” He whirled quickly and threw out his hands. His
head nodded the periods to his sentences.
“Ve all haf dem!”
An interne burst through the door and begged:
“Otto, gimme some coffee quick! Quick, Otto! Black!”
Matt Higgins noted the boy’s blanched face and shaking hands.
Otto soothed:
“Fut vus hit, Docturr?”
The interne gulped the coffee and shook his head pleadingly.
Otto leaned across the counter and ordered:
“Fut ... frightened you, Docturr?”
The boy put down the cup.
“Hell!” he strode toward the door, “I ain’t frightened. It was a nigger
baby with a severed head. It just got my guts ... that’s all...!”
When he was gone Otto turned to Matt Higgins, shrugged and smiled.
“Hiss iss ... fear!” he said.
Then leaning upon the counter he asked:
“Vy did _you_ cum Vest?”
Matt looked him straight in the eyes and replied:
“I’m a New York gangster, on vacation, come to see my kid brother
interning at the hospital.”
Otto perked his head.
“Maybe ... I know him.”
Matt Higgins shook his head.
“No. You couldn’t know him. He’s high-hat as hell. Only lets me see him
half a day every six months.... He’s my ... weak spot!”
He slid from the stool and stepped aside. Four medical students jostled
through the door.
Otto mopped his counter, slowly, thoughtfully, painstakingly.
Matt Higgins tipped his gray hat over his narrowed eyes, and went
through the door.
That man knew something ... but there was no use trying to get him
to....
He turned down Beeker Street and made his way over to Wilson Boulevard,
one end of which was façaded by the Elijah Wilson group; the other was
bounded by the River. He looked back over his shoulder to see if he
could get a glimpse of anything denoting the river. Only a curling line
of smoke from a ferry-boat.
The air was clear, still and comforting and the people all walked like
New Yorkers. But the women didn’t amount to much. No good legs. No
poise. No New York verve.
He looked at his watch as he entered the tall iron gate and approached
the main entrance. It was eight forty-five.
At the main entrance he took off his gray overcoat and stood back to let
two nurses pass. They weren’t much.
He passed the statue of Elijah Wilson, went on into the main corridor
and turned to the left. He walked with the air of a man who knows where
he is going and is not to be stopped by trifles. Long experience had
taught him that demeanor could get one almost anywhere. Especially in a
hospital.
Nurses and doctors passed, returning from breakfast. The faces of the
lovelorn and the love-lettered were revealed by every passing window.
Intermingled with all of these were a group of abnormally sad faces, and
then he remembered that today was the day of that nurse’s funeral. She’d
been a pretty little thing, too. Her fragile little corpse had skipped
rope in all of his dreams last night! He quickened his pace and his
hairy hands were clenched in his pockets.
Halfway down the main corridor he stopped ostensibly to look from a
window at the back garden of the hospital. He took in the approaching
people in both directions at a glance. They were all of them distant
enough to risk it.
He walked several feet further, began walking close to the wall, and
faded into a door. The door opened into what had been the old laboratory
building, and with the renovating of the hospital had been left vacant.
The corridor was lighted by a series of tall windows at the far end. The
brilliant morning sun sifted through them vaguely. The grime and dust of
the panes and of the intervening corridor made its trickle thin and
eerie.
Matthew Higgins closed the door softly and stood silently against it for
a second, listening. Then he accustomed his eyes to the light and looked
at the floor. In the center were the tracks he and Dr. MacArthur and
Snod had made last night. On the far side were the tracks which he and
Snod had agreed Snod should make this morning.
He shifted his hat upon the back of his head and began walking up the
corridor next to Snod’s morning tracks. Halfway up, he stopped and
listened. Then he threw his overcoat over his shoulder and approached,
cautiously, the door of the laboratory they had decided upon. On tiptoe.
Silently. His weight was thrown forward with the expert training of a
toe-dancer. Slowly, melting into it as he did so, he pushed open the
door of the laboratory.
It was darker than the corridor. The outside window blinds had been
closed for several years. He stood silently several seconds and then
decided to chance a match. He took off his hat and struck it carefully
in the shadow the hat provided. Then when it was well-lighted he lifted
it and surveyed the room.
The dusty lab sinks, the rotting rubber hose, the two stools with their
cane bottoms gone, and upon a bamboo couch in the corner Snod Smooty,
his face totally devoid of expression, sleeping with the abandon of an
infant.
As the match burned low in his fingers Matthew Higgins leaned over and
watched Snod Smooty sleep. This was the first time in ten years he had
known Snod to sleep with someone watching him.
The night must have been a swell affair! The smell of smoke reached
Smooty’s consciousness; he turned over suddenly and opened his eyes
completely. His face was still blank with an effort to see in the
darkness, and his voice came huskily:
“Matt?”
The answer was in keeping with the dimness. The match had burned out and
Matt Higgins was killing it on the floor with his toe.
“Yeah. Wake up! Any news?”
Snod Smooty raised his slim body to a sitting posture and slung his thin
feet to the grimy floor. He ran his left hand through his colorless hair
and wiped out his eyes with the right palm.
“Cigarette?”
Matt Higgins took _The Morning Call_ from his overcoat pocket and placed
it over the hole in one of the stools. Over that he folded his overcoat
and raised himself onto the stool.
“Better not. Watchmen or something. How was the night?”
Smooty put the unlit cigarette sullenly in his hip pocket and said
sweetly:
“Hell all the time ... and then some.... ’Bout ten a drunk naval
officer-beau of the dead nurse brought her a bouquet of red roses,
darling. Thought she was doing duty on the ward. Didn’t know about her
death. Shook the guts outa that student nurse when she told him and then
began playing hide-and-seek under the patients’ beds with me.”
“The devil!”
“Yeah, himself! I got him outa the hospital, socked him, and tucked him
into a parked car to sleep it off. Went over him first, though. William
Brady, U. S. N. Loot. J. G.
“Then I went back to the ward. And he had left the roses on the bed of
one old blattering fool and she took it that she’s next to go and can
she scream! So loud the others couldn’t make a squeak. Well, the Jew
doctor got there and a mess of nurses and hen medics and give them all a
bromide and then they needed bed-pans again ... and then ... they had to
have a drink of water. And then another bed-pan around. Like salt and
pepper, you know. Now I see why the Waldorf makes money. Pay toilets for
ladies.”
“And Lil?” Matt’s voice was demanding.
“Lil’s lost her nerve, Matt. Swears if you don’t get her outa there by
this afternoon, she’s going to walk out. Says the examination she had to
get in that damn bed was just like being frisked naked. During
pan-rounds we had some conversation.
“She’s took it into her head that that student nurse, the niece of the
head nurse, is doing the murders. She’s took it that the girl is like
that moll she caught in the circus last spring (she says you know which
one) working for a hypnotist and selling dope. Damn if Lil ain’t decided
that the head nurse of the clinic, Miss Kerr, who got her stout old tail
up there before it was all over, ain’t making her niece work for
somebody ... ain’t both of them working for some control ... who is
having them murder patients.”
“Lord God! That ties up, too.... Go on ... finish your story.”
“It’s Lil’s idea, Matt, that they are doing it because they hate young
Sterling and are trying to ruin him, and get him out ... and nothing I
could say ... between bed-pans and glasses of water ... could change her
mind a nits worth. When Lil is out of reach ... you know what I mean ...
she’s hard to reason with.