father at MacArthur’s request, because I was supposed to be a friend of
the old man. He’s worried, jumpy, nervous as a cat locked up, but he’s
square or I’m a ninny.”
“You’ve been one a long time, Matt. Still, if he’s where we can keep an
eye on him, just in case a real unbiased detective, like me, for
instance, should disagree with you, I suppose we’d better not tell Lil.
If she ain’t improved since this morning, she might do a real fade-out,
and then where’d we be, with MacArthur pressing for immediate action? In
hell! Who else charmed the pants off you, mister?”
“Shut up, Snod. We’ve only twenty minutes before you go back on!”
Snod groaned deeply. “A light luncheon, before I again enter the
dominion of women?”
“Eat out of the ward refrigerator and shut up!
“MacArthur gave me the head of all nurses, the leavings of a general
gone senile, and she took me to all of the clinics. So I could look the
doctors over. Administrator from a distant hospital line, you know....
I’ve hammered into MacArthur that it’s a crazy doctor.”
“Could you find one, Sherlock?”
“Didn’t see anything else! Crazy ain’t the beginning of it! First we
took in the Eye Clinic, all the wards dark and dismal and the air full
of unuttered screams, and people putting their hands up close to their
faces to see if they are better.
“That’s run by an old soft soap artist with hair and complexion like the
guts of a soft-boiled egg. Pure and precious. Pat the tail off a
Shetland pony and grab out your eye ’fore you knew it. Peters. Doctah
Petahhs. Princeton ’92 and Sons of Cincinnati rosette.”
“Your control?” Snod’s voice was casual and flat. “Snappin’ out eyes
gets a man in the habit of murdering, Mr. Higgins.”
“Aw hush, you little pan-toter. He’d run from a Pansy in a dark alley.”
“So would I.”
“From there,” Higgins’ voice was stern, “we went on to see the kids. The
pediatrician’s square. Eyes like a searchlight. Kids play around him.
Kids and dogs know. He does not suspect Sterling, and he knew I was a
detective. He didn’t say either.”
“Didn’t anybody utter a word this morning?”
“Snod! Gimme a chance!”
“Birds of a feather ... you sound as loony as the rest, Matt!”
Matthew Higgins flew off the handle. The darkness concealed his steely
eyes, but his voice was clear and hard.
“Are you telling me, or am I telling you? Ever been in a slaughter house
where they were doing everything from little pigs ... on up?”
“Sorry, Matt. Might have known it would get you! The trouble with you is
you are up against the medical profession, and the medical profession is
composed of men who wait until you are down to hit you, and you ain’t
used to....”
“Ain’t they queer, Snod? I didn’t see but two he-men this morning, and I
saw at least ten doctors, and about half of that ten, I’d be damned if I
could tell you what they was.”
“Statistics show that one-third of the silk underwear sold in the United
States is bought by doctors.” Snod was grave and authoritative.
“I believe you, kid!”
“They buy it for the nurses!” Snod continued monotonously.
“Aw ... dry up! ... From the kids we went to the Maternity Clinic, and
speaking of he-she things! Well he wore pants and a vest, but he talked
like a nervous wife of fifty and his hands were always twisting....”
“I know. A rat catcher!”
“They call him Prissy. How did you know?”
“And he believes Sterling is the murderer,” Snod announced.
“Say, you been sleeping all morning?”
“Yeah. But I’m a real detective. An obstetrician is the busiest animal
on God’s earth. He don’t have time to change his undershirt. Any woman
can call him at any hour, and what do you expect from a man in that fix
but gossip, mister? ’Spose you spent your life....”
“Aw, naw!” Matt’s response was definite. “He and Peters are buddies.”
“Sissies. It takes guts to fight death, and skill to be a doctor. Guts
is masculine, skill is feminine. They’re sissies.”
“It takes more than that to be a urologist, Snod. The one here holds out
in a clinic where you see men ... Jesus! ... The damnedest looking
liquids suspended over the beds hitched under the sheets with rubber
tubing and patients who curse your soul black if you so much as sneeze
as you pass them!”
“After the ball is over,” Snod inserted flatly.
“Well, believe me, that doctor is all man.”
“Have to be. Urologists rule men and men rule the world, Mr. Higgins.”
“Yeah? He believes young Sterling is innocent, and he knew I was ‘a
dick’ the minute he laid eyes on me.”
“And how do you know that? Personal charm? Or just ‘two strong men face
to face’?”
Higgins ignored the remark and continued:
“Offered me a good cigar, and looked me smack in the eye, and then says,
‘A friend of Doctor MacArthur and Dr. Bear Sterling is always welcome in
my clinic, sir.’ He’s the bird made MacArthur hire us against the
opposition, or I’m a green one.”
“You are that, too. But you are right about him. Everything comes to a
G. U. including ‘dicks’.”
“How do you know?”
“My grandmother told me. What about the psychiatrist?”
“Ever faced one of those birds?”
Snod had felt his way back to the couch and sat down.
“Nope, but I seen ’em telling fortunes at Coney Island.”
“You crazy? This fellow here is ’bout ten thousand jumps from a tent.
Got a building with swimming pools, and roof gardens and woodwork
painted green and locks on all the doors....”
“And a staff of old maid nurses and unmarried women doctors, who are
always telling you ‘sex done it.’ Night-prowling alley cats, at heart.
What about him?”
“His name is Hoffbein, and he’s got a little body like the tripod of a
camera, without the stiffening, holding up his mentality. Got a head
like a German. All front, with oriental black eyes, a controlled sissy
mouth, a beaky nose, and no back.
“He slithered all over the clinic with us, and God that was gruesome!
Perfectly healthy people, eating saltpetre in their food and wondering
how long before they’d be nuts! And him saying, ‘Routine, as you of
course know, is the basis of all recovery.’ And way down below a voice
wailing ‘Rock-a-bye-baby.’
“He ain’t a man, he ain’t just a sissy, he ain’t even a human being. If
you put a bullet through him, it wouldn’t even kill him.
“And he’s the thing we got to catch. He’s it!
“He’s so crazy that you ain’t sure whether he’s crazy or not. He’s the
control. He’s the person who is working the Kerr women and Lil is right.
And he knows I know it, too.”
“Charm it out of you?”
“After I’d seen the Surgical Clinic, and was always trying to ask
intelligent questions about costs and that kind of thing to the man who
is Bear Sterling’s assistant, Miss Carruthers took me to Cub Sterling
and I told you about him. But I saw the Head Nurse, Miss Kerr, too. And
then I knew I was right. Seen her?”
“Last night. During the Battle of Roses.” Snod’s reply came through the
darkness with confirmation.
“Then I ditched Miss Carruthers and went back to the Psychiatric Clinic
and into Hoffbein’s office before anybody realized I was there. He was
sitting in a room with bare walls, at a bare desk, and when he looked up
and saw me, he almost lost his ‘control.’
“He looks up and his eyes lost their whites like a horse, and he says
slow, ‘So.’
“‘Yep!’ I said, ‘You’re right.’
“Then I walked over and sat down in a chair beside his desk, and we
looked at each other and he tried to make me feel like the furniture in
the room was melting and running together and so I says:
“‘I know the multiplication tables well as Kim did, Doc. The last person
who tried that hypnotizing stunt on me was the head of a snowbird ring
at Atlantic City. She is making dresses in the Federal Pen in Atlanta,
now. What about Miss Kerr?’
“He turned red like a cooked beet and then he switched his head like a
sparrow and says:
“‘Miss Kerr is a nurse in this hospital and a very trusted person. Your
name? Real name?’
“‘Don’t matter a tinker’s damn, Doc! Miss Kerr was a patient of yours
some years ago and you used to hypnotize her to put her to sleep and
this doll, the doll which is always left by the murderer in Medicine
Clinic, was found in her desk and you knew it yesterday. What about Miss
Kerr?’
“He looked kind of scared a minute and then he turned on me
confidentially and says:
“‘If you want my opinion, Mr..., these unfortunate occurrences are the
work of Dr. Sterling, Junior. An excellent example of a man who has
devoted the best years of his active life entirely to his profession. To
speak plainly, sexual abstinence has caused an inversion of that natural
energy by which a man obtains his balance, and is responsible for his
aberration. When a man devotes himself entirely to any profession he in
time becomes somewhat unbalanced. If you understand...?’
“‘You bet I do, Dr. Hoffbein. You are in a rotten position, and all the
evidence you have been trying to build up against young Sterling in
every staff meeting for a week won’t hold water _fifteen minutes_ if you
can’t explain to me by four o’clock about the doll....’
“He stiffened and replied: ‘I’m going to Miss Standish’s funeral.’
“‘See you there, then,’ I said, rising.
“At the door I turned and his eyes were spraying venom on me like a
snake’s fangs, and he says:
“‘What patients tell me in confidence, I will never....’
“‘Reveal on the gallows,’ I finished slowly. ‘Think it over, Doctor!
You’ll be guarded till you make up your mind.’
“Then I shut the door, hard, and came here.”
“Who is watching him?”
“A local man the dick at the Roosevelt got me. It’s five to three. You’d
better be moving....”
Snod rose slowly. “Where are you going? What shall I tell Lil?”
“To scare the guts out of the Kerr women. Tell Lil she’s right.”
Snod left the building by the basement door and started up the service
corridor toward the Medicine Clinic. Matt Higgins rolled his overcoat
carefully in the crumpled copy of _The Morning Call_, hid it in a corner
of the room and left the building by the main corridor door. Since it
was three o’clock and the duty changes were at two and five, he took a
chance....
By two-thirty the patients on Ward B had been bedded down for their
afternoon nap. Two student nurses were on duty. Miss Kexter was off for
the afternoon.
Sally Ferguson lay in her bed, her arms locked above her head, her knees
crossed and making a tent of the covers. She was smoking her last
cigarette, inhaling slowly and gazing from the window. She had slept all
night, a loggy black sleep, and was fatigued and internally trembly. A
boredom, a lassitude and a loneliness were descending.
An overpowering desire to see Cub, backed by a hundred residents and
internes, if necessary ... just to watch his eyes change and slip over
hers ... to see again, even at a distance, the nice way the black hair
grew below his white cuffs and over the knuckles of his fingers ... to
hear from his own lips that, “Doctor Bear Sterling is doing nicely,
thank you” ... instead of having it smirked by prim nurses....
The ash-laden tip fell upon the covers. She flounced them and decided
even if his father died, even if _The Call_ was bombed, she had Cub
forever and he had her and they both knew it, and life was going to be
complete ... yet!
The door to her room breathed gently inward. A man wiggled through and
closed it. For a moment he stood entirely silent, then his beady black
eyes snapped and his bumpy body relaxed.
The rush of asthmatic air made Sally slide her eyes and gasp:
“Jumbo! Where did you come from?”
Her voice relaxed into amusement and continued:
“You are an angel from God. Give me a cigarette!”
Without withdrawing his thumbs from his vest armholes, he pushed two
fingers into a pocket and flipped his cigarette case onto the bed.
Sally’s eyes narrowed. Jumbo had a spell of his “scoop hysterics.”
Something was up! She lit the new cigarette and remained silent.
The words splashed out of the man.
“Hell of a time getting in. No visitors. You ain’t lookin’ sick, Ferg.
Sneaked up the porch stairs. Half hour stomach travel and five minutes
walking. I ain’t got time to ask polite questions.
“Listen, Ferg. You been here long enough to get the dope. What is it?
Come on, kid! What about this Cub Sterling? Bucks wants to....”
Sally kept his eyes on her body and fought for time.
“What? Who?”
“Bucks. In case you’ve forgot, Ferg, he’s City Editor of _The Call_ and
saving six columns on the front page for this Sterling story.”
Sally took the cigarette from her lips and said crisply:
“Why don’t you quit bubbling, Jumbo, and tell me what it’s all about?”
“About. Je-sus Christ, Ferg. About! It’s about this guy Sterling
murdering patients in that ward out there. Bucks says you’ve had time to
get ‘in’ and it’s up to you to get the dots on him. Four people gone out
in the same bed since Thursday. All patients of his. Done between eleven
and twelve at night. He jabbed ’em with a hypodermic. For four days
we’ve known hell had burst loose up here, but we couldn’t squeeze blood
from no tick. Then this morning a woman dropped a bunch of red roses in
the service corridor and we got a tip.
“The Attorney-General’s trying to get the Governor to ‘hush’ it ... but
Bucks says he can fry his tail in hell. It’s the biggest story west of
the Mississippi in twenty years and he ain’t goin’ to lock those presses
’till ten tonight. In the meantime you got to....”
As usual when excited, Jumbo walked up and down and did not look at the
person he was addressing. That habit gave Sally time to take the shock
before he turned.
She held the cigarette between her lips to keep them from trembling. Her
feet were flat upon the mattress, pressing against each other
desperately. Her voice was hail-fellow and confident. She said:
“Thanks for the chance you and Bucks are giving me. It’s white! Darned
white! And lucky, too, Jumbo. He’s my doctor. Due to come to see me in
about half an hour. You go back and tell Bucks to give me till five.
It’s now a quarter to three. I’ll get the story! Gimme a pencil and some
paper. Beat it, before somebody comes in...!”
“But Bucks said....”
“You tell Bucks Hammond if he wants this story, he’ll get it ...
provided he gives me a little time. I know the ropes around here. I know
the man. The only way to muff it is for you to stand there till you’re
caught! Quit sucking your tongue like a lolly-pop and beat it. If you
are not back by five I’ll wrap my story in a cake of soap and sling it
out that window!”
Jumbo tripped to the door, turned and said:
“You’re a swell kid, Ferg! Everybody’s missin’ you!”
“Been one twenty-four years! Tell ’em hello, Jumbo!”
After he was gone Sally Ferguson pulled the sheets over her head and
sobbed dryly for five minutes. Then she tiptoed over to the washbasin,
put cold water under her eyes and got back into bed.
Her mouth was set. Her head was very high.
He was as innocent as she was and ... by God ... she’d prove it. But you
couldn’t prove anything lying here being policed every pulse counting.
You had to get out and think and....
She rang her bell; when the student nurse came, she smiled wanly and
said:
“Dr. Mattus and Dr. Sterling said I might get up for a while this
afternoon. Will you bring me my clothes now? They said from three to
five.”
The girl drank the smile. When she returned with the clothes she
apologized:
“Can you manage alone, Miss Merriweather? The other nurse has the cramps
and doesn’t want to report off duty, less she has to. So I’m doing most
of...?”
“Sure,” Sally smiled. “Poor kid!”
The girl turned from the door and said, “Ring if you need me!”
A terrible strength began to flow through Sally. A strength which
centered just under the skin and left her vitals hollow and quivering.
It took ten precious minutes to dress. Inside, and with every motion of
pulling on stockings, adjusting garters, smoothing her hair, inside,
deep inside, her consciousness sang:
“Cub Sterling, you are not! You are not! Cub darling, I love you! I love
you!”
The deep singing was like a walking cane as she started across the room
for the door. She pulled the knob, hesitantly, ascertained the student
nurse was out of sight, and gathering all of her strength, ran the few
feet to the screen porch door. When her knees gave way she was on the
concrete steps, halfway down to Ward A, and Ward A was the ground floor.
A wild mental clearing made her understand that with or without
strength, she had to reach that porch off Ward A, get over the railing
and drop to the ground, before the nurses began rolling the patients out
for their afternoon airing.
Ten minutes later, a young girl, walking with an erectness every motion
of which hurt, entered Otto’s restaurant and leaned against the deserted
bar.
She fastened her violet eyes into Otto and said:
“I love Cub Sterling as much as you do. I think I can save him ... if
you’ll lend me a dollar for two hours....”
The money was in her hand before Otto could open his lips. When he did
open them, the girl was already in a taxi-cab, and the cab was coasting
down the hill from the hospital.
When Miss Carruthers, in response to a telephone call, brought Evelina
Kerr, student nurse, to Dr. MacArthur’s office, Matt Higgins rose from a
chair and said:
“Miss Carruthers, Dr. MacArthur just stepped out a minute.... He asked
me to wait until he returned and ask you to please let this nurse...?”
His “silver threads” smile brought an immediate acquiescence. The old
lady smiled, backed out, and Higgins offered the student nurse a chair.
She sat upon the edge, her narrow feet together and the bony ankles
pressing against each other. Higgins offered her a cigarette. Her
refusal was jerky.
“Excuse me,” he said walking toward the door. “My mistake. I don’t want
to get you thrown out.”
She flinched slightly and her round chin tried for a well-bred hauteur.
It missed.
When the door was closed, Higgins looked squarely, slowly, with open
summary, at the girl. She thought he was flirting. When his eyes began
their spreading lid trick, she felt as though he were pointing the
muzzle of a pistol toward her. She tried to fight his silence with
words.
“Who are you? Why are you looking at me that way?”
Higgins laid his head against the door. His lids continued widening.
Her words beat the air:
“Stop looking at me! Stop it!”
His words were like an ice cloth against her brain:
“Why don’t you quit lying, girlie?”
The battle was uneven. Perfect physical control against shattered
nerves. Her close-set eyes began to ferret. She made a last effort to
hide behind her sex.
“I’m not lying. I don’t know what you are talking about! You are crazy!”
Matt’s eyes stayed steadfast. He said very slowly:
“No ... it’s your aunt who is crazy!”
Her beaten nerves threw the battle back to her body. She leaped to her
feet.
“She’s not. She’s not! I swear to God she’s not!”
Higgins walked over and clenched his hands into her shoulders.
“Look at me!”
She fought to get loose.
He increased, gradually, his hold.
“Look ... at ... me...!”
Her piglike eyes cringed before his steel ones.
Quickly, unexpectedly, he released his hold and smiled at her. His voice
was deep.
“Kiddo, I’m sorry for you. Sit down!”
She fell into a chair and began dry-sobbing. He filled a glass from the
thermos jug on the mantel and placed it against her lips. And while she
drank, with his free hand he soothed her ugly little forehead as one
soothes a terrified child.
Kindness was the one thing the girl had never known. She couldn’t fence
against it.
Higgins’ reasoning voice suggested:
“Tell me about it, won’t you?”
He took the glass and set it upon the table. Then he took her sweating
hand and held it protectingly in his.
The words cascaded out of her:
“She’s not killing them! I swear to God she’s not! She’s ... she’s ... I
can’t tell you ... she’ll have me thrown out.... I can’t! I can’t!”
Higgins put his other hand beneath the hand he was already holding.
“Go on!” he ordered in a monotone.... “She’s...?”
His eyes picked into the shady depths of her close-set ones. He smiled
again....
The girl’s terror fell away. She whispered:
“She’s ... taking ... morphia-off-the-ward-I’m-on-in-her-clinic. At
night. Between the supervisor’s rounds!”
Neither the pressure of his hands nor his voice changed.
“For herself?”
“Yes!”
“Is she an...?”
The girl’s whisper was almost inaudible....
“I ... I ... think ... so....”
Higgins’ voice became stern.
“Then how do you know she’s not ... the murderer?”
The girl shot back instantly:
“Because she ... didn’t come until I notified her ... the night ... the
nurse ... went out!”
“Maybe you didn’t see her.”
Her words came in gasps:
“I ... I ... counted-the-tablets ... when-I-came-on ... duty ...
and-when-I-went-off. They ... checked...!”
“Perhaps she didn’t take any to throw you off the track. Had you thought
of...?’”
The terror in her eyes and voice made Matt shiver.
“No...!”
The word was a wail.
He changed his tactics immediately.
“That’s not likely, though. When the urge is ‘on’, nothing ... not even
murder ... can stop it.”
He had risen while he was talking and opened the door into the corridor.
Ten minutes had passed. Dr. MacArthur entered. Higgins said to the girl:
“You have nothing more to worry about. Dr. MacArthur and Miss Carruthers
will stand behind you ... till you graduate!”
Then he went out of the Administration Building, down the main corridor
of the hospital. The corridor was nearly empty. In the distance five
probationers, with new text books under their arms, were coming toward
him, but they were the only people in sight. The wards had settled down
for the afternoon, the white nurses were off duty, and two student
nurses on each floor and the head nurse of each building were on duty.
The internes and resident were doing lab or case studies.
After he rounded the corner and started toward Medicine Clinic, he met
more people and an air of increased tension. The tension was especially
plain in the orderlies and maids. He remembered that he had forgotten to
tell Snod about the roses, and considered going up to Ward B after he
entered Medicine Clinic, then decided to let it slip. That would be
dangerous. Even though he had his group cornered there was no reason to
take unnecessary chances.
Good thing he had spent part of last evening checking up on Miss Kerr’s
past. Now that he had the dope information....
Lil Parkins was the best woman he had ever worked with. She smelt people
like a dog. Kind of sixth sense and she never missed. Her hunches had
made his reputation.
The explosive air hung over him like a pall. Through an open door he
could see Miss Roenna Kerr, her flat feet primly under her desk, her
white pompadour overhanging her lean face....
He walked straight into her office and closed the door behind him. Her
pen dropped from her fingers and she turned her long head. Then her face
became as devoid of expression as a mule’s. Panicky and blank with fear.
But her long years of training came briskly to her aid.
“What can I do for you? Is there something in the Clinic that you failed
to see, Mr. Immerheld?”
“I’m not Mr. Immerheld of Cornell Medical Center, Miss Kerr. I am from
New York, though, and you can be so good as to tell me,” his gray eyes
narrowed and tried to make her china blue ones rise above his necktie,
“how you happened to have this?”
He drew from his back pocket the doll in the blue dress and frilled
bonnet, that Mattus had found in Miss Kerr’s desk, and turned it over on
its stomach.
The raucous, “Pa-pa! Pa-pa! Pa-pa!” kept repeating itself slowly and
insistently.
“Turn it over! Turn it over! I’ll tell you,” there was relief in her
voice.
“My niece had a P. M. several ... about ... a week ago ... and went to a
street fair and won it. She brought it to me....”
Higgins seated himself carefully in a chair beside her desk and said:
“Half an hour ago the doll that your niece won was lying in her top
bureau drawer!”
Without intending to do so, her china blue eyes raised to his and he
shot past her protective covering into her unprepared ear:
“Is morphia quicker than cocaine?”
From inside, without intention, she answered:
“Yes. Much.”
Then she realized what she had said and opened her lips to make a
statement about “depending upon the condition of the patient....”
Higgins did not allow her to utter the words. Once an addict has
acknowledged the habit, he knew she was powerless to refrain from
talking about it.
“What’s the shot you use?”
“An eighth used to do. It’s a half now....”
Her hands began to flutter wildly. Higgins turned the doll over again.
Its nasal whining raised the electric tension.
His voice cut through the whining. He said: