nurse....”
“I didn’t! Before God, I _didn’t do_....”
“You don’t like Cub Sterling, do you?”
The question shot at her like a bullet. She staggered internally.
“Dr. Hoffbein doesn’t like him, either! Dr. Hoffbein used to put you to
sleep after...!”
“After what?” she defied and cowered at the same time.
“After that woman doctor you lived with died.”
“That’s not so. How do you know that?”
“Dr. Hoffbein.”
“He didn’t tell you either. He just called me....”
“Maybe it’s in your case history, then....” He leaned quickly forward.
“Why did you hide the doll?”
“To protect my niece.”
He changed his tactics:
“Did you use your own syringe on the nurse?”
The old woman’s facial muscles contracted. Her yellow teeth laid bare
against her purpling lips. Her bust relaxed hopelessly and then she
began to talk, openly, helplessly:
“I didn’t do the nurse. Really, I didn’t. I didn’t do any of them! ... I
... I ... was ... there ... Monday ... but....”
“Who did ... them ... if you didn’t?”
Her china eyes protruded.
“One ... one of ... the Cub Sterling’s!!!”
“What?”
The words bit through her old teeth:
“There are two of them! ... Two...! ... Two Cub Sterlings...! I _saw_
them that night ... of the first traceable murder Monday night! ... I
was coming out of the Medicine Closet with my ... and one of them was
bending over the patient in Bed 11, and one of them was shadowed against
the window shade bending over the patient in Room Two.
“And the one ... bending over the patient in Bed 11 ...” her words began
to burst ... “_saw me_! I know _he saw me_! ...”
Higgins cut in sternly:
“It was your duty to ... investigate....”
Her hands began to pick her bosom wildly.
“I couldn’t.... I couldn’t.... Don’t you see I couldn’t?”
“Why didn’t you tell Dr. Hoffbein...?”
“Because ... because ... he had said if ... I ever went back ... to my
... habit ... on duty....”
Higgins nodded grimly and hunched forward.
“Who around this hospital looks like Cub Sterling?”
“Nobody! I swear nobody! Oh, God, I’ve been over every single face since
then ... in my mind ... and on sight.... Nobody!”
“One of those Cub Sterlings was a man who knew you were taking dope,
Miss Kerr ... who knew that when you saw him ... you’d keep your mouth
shut. Who knew...?”
“Nobody but ... my ... niece! That’s why I took the doll. To keep the
Staff from ... grilling her ... I was afraid....”
“You are missing out somewhere. Who checks the dope?”
“The floor nurse, once a month. She gives the sheet to me and I turn the
clinic sheets over to the pharmacy....”
“Ah, the pharmacy! They knew, Miss Kerr!”
“No! No! They didn’t know. I ... I ... changed ... the sheet from Ward B
... the day I turned it in ... so as to cover....”
“When did you turn it in?”
“The day of the first traceable murder.”
“Take your telephone, Miss Kerr, and ask the white nurse from Ward B if
the pharmacy called her to check her figures.”
“She’s off duty now.”
“Get her in her room!”
The old nurse hesitated and cringed.
Higgins’ voice cut her into action.
“If you want to save your own neck ... take it!”
When Miss Kerr hung the receiver back upon the hook she whispered:
“They did. She ... read them ... her pencil memorandum ... on
Monday....”
Higgins rose steadily and said carefully:
“If you go on as though nothing has happened, you may get off ... scott
free. As soon as I step from this door, until I return, there will
always be somebody watching you. Is the pharmacy next to the
Administration Building?”
Her wilted voice responded:
“Yes. It is off the main corridor ... but I can’t go on! I _can’t_!”
He stood against the closed door and snapped:
“Would you rather have a chance to resign ... or spend the rest of your
life in the pen?”
“Resign!”
“You are not off duty until seven! Understand?”
The old pompadour shook carelessly.
Higgins opened the door and started through the lobby and up the main
corridor toward the pharmacy. His brain was reeling. He was dizzy.
Two Cub Sterlings! God Almighty! Suppose she was lying? Suppose? ... She
was too frightened to leave, though.... The best thing to do was sit
tight and look over the pharmacy staff.
When Snod Smooty came back on Ward B, he found two student nurses on
duty and the women remarkably quiet. They were still subdued by the
grandness of Dr. Cub Sterling’s leaving his dying father to come to see
about them. They were excited over his furrowed face and his sudden
ageing. They didn’t call it that, but they felt it, profoundly. To the
funeral-wake-type, death is always as exciting as birth, and the death
of a famous doctor....
Snod tiptoed up to lower a window shade near Lil Parkins’ bed. She was
sleeping peacefully and contentedly. The same feeling of admiration
which the other women had experienced for Cub Sterling had taken the
form of protective relaxation in Lil Parkins. He would see that nothing
happened to her. He had told her to go to sleep.
An expression of sudden warmth lay over the colorless features of Snod
Smooty as he looked at Lil. A grand girl, Lil! And a swell detective! Do
anything for a pal. Nursed him through pneumonia last fall, just because
he was her friend....
The day orderly beckoned to him and he went back to washing dishes. They
worked quietly and with the doors closed. One of the nurses came to say
she was going off the floor a minute.
The day orderly was a squashy fellow who talked all the time. Snod had
known it soon as he set eyes on him. He finished the saucers and left
the man still talking. His garrulousness had put Snod’s nerves on the
jump and he was hungry, too.
Three-thirty and the fool wouldn’t leave him long enough to get even a
bottle of cream outa the ice box! Maybe a cigarette would help....
Snod eased over toward the door and through it. Halfway up the ward
corridor, he caught sight of chubby Bessie Ellis sitting up in her crib
and playing with a doll ... exactly like the two Dr. MacArthur had shown
them yesterday.
He ran noiselessly to her crib and smiled at her. They were friends
immediately. As he passed the medicine closet he saw the single student
nurse coming out of the nurses’ lavatory.
When he smiled at Bessie he took hold of the foot-board of the crib to
steady himself. She was six, and the pink dress of the doll looked
pretty against her brown curls and eyes.
It was the hardest job he had ever tackled. He said slowly, and his face
was innocent and friendly:
“Where did you get that new dollie Baby?”
“Dr. Cub jes’ gave her to me....”
Snod reeled from the bed and staggered toward that of Lil Parkins. The
other women were still asleep. Some of them were snoring. He leaned over
and peered behind the drawn curtain.
Lil’s eyes were wild with fear and her face began to contract.
“Stop it!” Snod’s voice was harsh and heavy. “Tell me! You all right?”
She nodded weakly and her intense features began kaleidoscoping her
thoughts:
“God Almighty! It’s Dr. Cub Sterling. I trapped him ... cold.... He
thought I was asleep and when he leaned over me ... with the
hypodermic....” her profile shadow convulsed against the white pillow,
“I ... opened ... my eyes. He had pulled the curtains to ... get me...!
“I said, ‘You!’ and started to scream ... and he drew back and his eyes,
Snod. Oh, God ... run mad, together. Crazy! And then he cocked his left
shoulder, shrugged, lowered his curly head and bowed himself ... out.
“It’s spells, Snod. He wasn’t that way this morning. His eyes! I
couldn’t scream. My heart....”
“Rest it, kiddo, till I get Matt.”
Snod coiled around and his eyes with the sudden sharpness of great
stress saw the tall figure with the high shoulder walk out of the linen
closet and enter the elevator.
And then swiftly, noiselessly, and panther-like he followed.
The elevator door closed just as he reached it.
Three minutes later Snod Smooty slouched up the main corridor. Nobody
was in sight, either way, except in the distance was a man. The man wore
a white hospital coat, and Snod eyed him hopelessly; then Snod’s eyes
narrowed.
The man’s left shoulder had lifted and from the left patch pocket there
was dangling a frilled pink organdie doll bonnet!
Snod gathered his muscles and began to run....
He was almost up with the man when a panicky woman opened a side door
and halted his progress.
She fell into his arms, before he could sidestep her, and the agony of
her face made him involuntarily support her.
“The Maternity Clinic. Quick! For God’s sake, quick!”
Snod looked both ways. Only the tall figure was visible.
“For God’s sake, hurry!”
He gathered the tortured body of the woman into his long arms and began
running with his back to the retreating figure.
Nature had tripped him, and he knew it.
When he had helped the orderly inside the door of the Maternity Clinic,
who awaited such emergencies, to get the panic-stricken woman onto a
handy stretcher, Snod turned swiftly and started slowly back toward the
Administration Building.
MacArthur would know where Matt was. No use trying to locate him through
Miss Kerr.
God in Heaven! Young Sterling! And they had been so damn near framing
three innocent people! Within that space of a hundred yards, he must
readjust his mind.
His ineffectual thin body shambled innocuously along....
Behind him there burst upon the air the perfect trilling of a robin.
Snod slid over to a window and looked stupidly at the grass in the back
garden.
Matt Higgins drew alongside and asked loudly:
“Beg your pardon, but could you tell me the way...?”
Snod began pointing through the window at the different buildings. His
eyes followed his fingers. His voice, once it had formulated an action,
was like a scimiter blade. It shimmered:
“Where’s MacArthur?”
Higgins was harassed and hot. He was measuring his forefinger against
the left thumb.
“Gone to train to meet dead nurse’s mother. There are two Cub Sterlings,
old Kerr says. Just confessed. Claims she’s seen ’em. On my way now....”
Snod’s loose hands continued their flappings.
“Kerr’s innocent. Two? Jes-sus! One Cub Sterling just tried to murder
Lil. She frightened him off!”
Higgins face grayed.
“W-h-a-t?”
Snod snapped, “I nearly caught him. Had a doll bonnet hanging from his
pocket, walking up this corridor five minutes ago. Pregnant woman....”
A smile almost split Matt’s lips. Words knocked it off:
“I’ll call MacArthur at the station. Have him get the sheriff to send a
warrant immediately. No! I’ll get the kids’ man. His brother is
Attorney-General. He can act quicker. Then I’ll watch Cub Sterling,
until they come. Give me time to think. Something don’t click. I still
don’t believe it...! You go to the pharmacy before you go back to Lil
... over there ... and see if the pharmacist is in ... if he is watch
him until I come....”
Snod’s hands continued their waving. But his eye was out upon the
corridor. He hissed:
“A running man.... Turn around, Matt!”
Matt whirled. Ahead, almost through the door into the Administration
Building, and round the statue of Elijah Wilson, careened Cub Sterling.
Higgins’ legs were in motion and his words shot back:
“I’ll follow this one. You watch out for Lil! The other may try
again....”
Snod’s face remained blank. His biscuit watch was in his hand. Four
doctors were coming up the corridor. His deferential voice followed
Higgins:
“You have five minutes to make that train, sir.”
»X«
The Cupola
As the taxi woggled downhill, Jumbo’s words pushed past the busy
clicking of the meter into Sally’s weary brain. Once inside her
consciousness, they rolled around like brightly colored Christmas tree
balls, and butted into each other and crashed. Far down beneath the
shattering concussions her mind began reverberating:
“Think it over, think it over, think it over.”
Twice she decided to go to Bucks and then she knew it would be hopeless.
They couldn’t help if a big story broke. They didn’t make the news. They
... they were like buzzards ... and she must do something to keep them
... from....
Murdering patients.... Oh God! Oh God! ... No! ... They are wrong!
She pushed her curly bright hair back from her sweating forehead, and at
_The Call_ building gave the driver the dollar, and slipped unnoticed
into a crowded elevator and out again in the main hallway of the sixth
floor.
This wouldn’t do. Somebody might come along.
She leaned against the wall for a moment, then decided to walk up to the
seventh floor. There was a vacant suite of offices on the corner;
perhaps if she went where there was plenty of room her brain would get
... wider....
Half way up the marble stairs began rising and hitting her in the face,
and then slipping back so that she couldn’t quite reach them when she
stepped. She slumped and rested.
If Cub’s arms were only around her now. How many murders had there been?
Four! Jumbo had said four, and the last a nurse. The night he brought
the last cigarettes. She hadn’t seen him since the morning after ... the
nurse.... Not since Dr. Bear began dying ... but she knew! She knew!
Oh God! God! It wasn’t Cub! It wasn’t! A murderer couldn’t kiss you so
that your soul ran up and spread out flat under his lips.... A murderer
couldn’t look at you so that you said you were sorry, even when you
tried not to be.... A murderer’s hair wouldn’t fold into little waves
where it spread under the curve at the back of his neck.
But how could you tell a paper that? How could you make a city editor
understand ... when you had no proof ... that a man was innocent and
framed?
There must be some way! You had to think clearly to see it, and the
place to think was upstairs with the whole world spread out below in
orderly rows and streets. Just as the sun spread over the city, and
strengthened it, so control made it possible.... Two hours! Less than
that now....
She clenched her fists tightly and rose with studied steadiness.
Necessity cleared the brain. Working in a newspaper office taught that
the best ideas came under pressure. She had gone out on enough murder
stories to know the person who worked his brain ... could beat anything
... even newspaper reporters and ... police.
By the time Sally reached the door of the vacant suite, the seams of her
stockings were straightened and her reddening eyes carefully and
painstakingly dry. There was an air of jauntiness about her small
figure.
She had a head and was going to use it!
Her violet eyes had changed to the deep purple and iridescent white of
orchids. She closed the door and stood against it. Then her irises
focused.
A stooped, intent figure was silhouetted between the rows of windows and
the long city vistas below. For a second her artistic sense forebade
speech.
Like an apple tree, gnarled and buffeted by too much winter, the thin
shoulders, flat chest, beak nose, and long hands ribboned with purple
veins, strained after the peering eyes which were hidden by a pair of
binoculars. The dirty white hair drawn into a tightly furled knot, on
the upper front of the head, helped Sally recognize the
next-to-the-oldest-employe of _The Morning Call_. She momentarily forgot
Cub Sterling.
“Emma! What are you doing?”
Emma wheeled around, and the binoculars fell from her hands. Sally moved
with extended palms to catch them.
“Oh, it’s you!” Emma’s voice was pleased and birdlike. “They don’t drop,
Miss Ferguson. Mr. Bucks told me you was on vacation. Did you have a
nice time, dearie?” She reached toward the long leather thong which held
the binoculars around her scrawny neck and then embarrassment replaced
pleasure.
“What _are_ you doing?”
“Well, I tell you, dearie. Whin I can’t git inta th’ offices on six
ri-away, I jes’ comes here for a little while and takes in the city ...
kinda. It helps a lot, sometimes, for bein’ lonesum, Miss Ferguson.”
The news-story instinct welled up. Sally eased down into a window sill.
Perhaps, if you shifted the mind completely....
“Where did you get them?”
“Well, dearie, it’s like this: My boy ... you know ... what was killed
at the Argonah, had ’em.” Emma’s lower jaw dropped. “His buddy ... my
boy had got ’em off’n a dead German General, and you kno’ what fine
things Germans makes ... well, his buddy took ’em off’n my boy’s body
after ... and brought ’em back to me. And, Miss Ferguson, he seys whin
he give ’em to me, he seys, ‘These is t’gif ye a chancst t’see life.’
“Ain’t that sweet, dearie? And they’se bin the greates’ consterashun thu
m’sorrow. Whin I gits t’thinkin’ ’bout my boy and wishin’ f’
gran’chillrin ... you kno’ ... I jes’ comes up here and takes in a few
lifes.”
A swell newspaper story! “Vicarious living,” Sally muttered.
Emma, heard it and protested:
“No mam! Nuthin’ like that! I never looks beyond Second Street, Miss
Ferguson. Two blocks this side of Beeker Street is an awful nice
I-talyan neighb-hood. It’s sweet t’see th’women nursin’ babies on
do’steps. That’s helped me an awful lot ... sometimes....
“Wouldn’t you like to take a look, dearie?”
Emma removed the thong from her neck with the care a concert master
saves for his violin. Her face had now a deep, sweet warmth. Miss
Ferguson had given her five dollars at Easter and at Christmas and this
was a chancst....
Sally saw the look and rose. The folds of her blue crepe dress molded
the curve of her slender thighs as she lifted the thong carefully over
her head, adroitly around her white cowl collar, and walked toward the
window.
Emma stood proudly by and suggested:
“If you look tword the sout’wes’ down by Sears, Roebuck, you kin’ jes’
catch a piece of the bridge ’roun’ th’corner buildin’. It’s awful prutty
at sunset.”
Sally, who was something of a football fan, realized these were
eight-power Zeiss binoculars. They brought the city out with startling
clearness. She looked for the University, and on out toward Sears,
Roebuck and across the river. Then she began picking out the Italian
district near Becker Street and the Speakeasy just around the corner
near Pershing Road.
“They’re wond-er-ful, Emma!”
“Ain’t they gran’?”
Suddenly she remembered about Cub, and trained the glasses upon the
Elijah Wilson four blocks uphill. Cub was over there ... somewhere....
Cub was....
She began going over the building carefully. How pink the bricks were in
the afternoon sun! The trees up Wilson Boulevard looked so green and
feathery! How....
Her eyes found the cupola upon the top of the Administration Building.
She had always wanted to see what was in that cupola! She unscrewed the
lenses to their full power. They came into focus. One of the grimy
windows was open. How lucky! She trained them into it.
Scissored against the far white wall was Cub Sterling sitting at a small
table. His hand held a hypodermic syringe. He was laughing....
God Almighty!
Sally staggered as if she had been struck. Emma, supporting her,
soothed:
“I orta told you, dearie. If you looks too much you gits dizzy.”
“Emma,” her tone was parched and pleading, “look through these at the
cupola of the Elijah Wilson Hospital and tell me what you see.”
The old woman took the binoculars, readjusted them ... it seemed to
Sally that she used a thousand years ... and said:
“Shucks, honey, I don’t see nuthin’ but a curly-headed man settin’ at a
little table writin’ in a book.... H’m ... he’s awful nice lookin’!,
too....”
Sally snatched the glasses and spread her feet to prop herself while she
projected them. Her eyes, as she stiffly moved the dials, were filmy,
but within seconds she had the lenses magnifying the cupola and as a man
might repeat by rote what he knew by heart, she forced her
horror-stricken eyes to focus again.
What they saw was Cub Sterling sitting at the same small table, a pen in
his hand, writing swiftly and absorbedly in a small book. Behind him was
the same big red splotch ... as if a bucket of blood had been thrown
against the wall ... the same ... small medicine case between two of the
sooty windows.
But before him, upon the table, was the hypodermic syringe. Her eyes
kept coming back to it over, over and over, as the eyes of a bird
fascinated come back to a snake. And upon his face, as he wrote, was the
awful look which she had never seen there, until he held that syringe up
and laughed.
As she gazed, like an echo in the distance, little things about him
began to be unfamiliar. There wasn’t so much distance under his ear and
collar, where she had buried her nose. And his hair wasn’t that long ...
not nearly.... He had just had his hair cut ... Tuesday....
Maybe that was somebody else.... Maybe....
The glasses began slipping from her hands and while they fell, with the
rapidity of a panic-stricken brain, she decided.
If it was Cub and she telephoned him and told him she needed him
terribly and to come right away and he came, then it wasn’t Cub. And if
he didn’t come, but stayed right there in that chair all the time....
Well, you had to know ... sometime....
“Emma,” her voice was crisp and had lost its note of friendly equality,
“put those binoculars to your eyes and watch that man in the top of the
hospital till I come back.... Don’t take your eyes off of him _for one
second_. It’s ... it’s ... whether I’m ever happy depends on his sitting
in that chair till I come back.”
The bent old woman took the glasses, tremblingly, and Sally was halfway
down the hall of the seventh floor before the cupola was in focus again.
As she ran she debated whether to take a chance and call from the
newspaper office. The open door of a suite of legal offices flashed by.
She wheeled and entered. None of the stenographers was in the outer
office.
Steadying herself against a typewriter desk she snatched up the
telephone:
“Wilson 2000. Hurry, please!”
She had called it two weeks ago for a news story!
In response to the hospital operator’s, “Lijah-Wilsin,” she said:
“Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior.”
The voice died away and then came back:
“Dr. Sterling’s ’phone doesn’t answer.”
“Call him on the loud speaker, please. It’s terribly important.”
She could hear the weary, raucous rasping, which was penetrating every
corridor of the whole hospital:
“Docterr Ste-earling. Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-earling-Junyior....”
Every day of the month on the calendar tacked to the far wall hit her in
the face ... Monday, the ninth ... Monday, the sixteenth ... before she
heard Cub’s:
“Dr. Ethridge Sterling, speaking.”
“Cub ... can you come to room 708 in _The Call_ building, right
away...?”
“What? ... Salscie...? Where are you? How did you...?”
A terrible calm invaded her.
“It’s me, Cub! I walked out of the hospital. I had to...! Something
awful...!”
“What?” the rising concern of his voice seemed to be put on, and then
his, “I can’t leave Father. He’s....”
She braced herself for a final effort and begged:
“I know. But I’m in _terrible_ ... I need you, darling!”
“But, Salscie....”
“Room 708, Cub! ...”
She threw the telephone from her and reeled into the hall and toward the
vacant suite. Her eyes were right! Cub was not coming. Cub was ...
was....
With a listlessness which portrayed great physical effort, she pushed
the door open and looked toward the stooped back of Emma; then she
swayed steadily toward a low Window sill and sat down. Her eyes were the
color of clouds before a thunder storm and she leaned her head against
the casing.
Then with that funny clearness which is always part of terror, she began
to count the carpet tacks on both sides of two planks in the floor. One,
two ... his voice was foggy and distant ... six, seven, eight ... he was
irritated.... “I can’t come. I can’t come!”... Cub Sterling was a
murderer ... a maniac....
As the thought began forming in her mind she revolted, and the revolt
brought energy. Within half a minute after entering the room, she was at
Emma’s side, begging:
“He didn’t move, did he? He didn’t move, Emma?”
“Not as I seen, but twicest I sneezed and los’ him, Miss Ferguson. But
whin I got him back in, agin, he was settin’ jes th’ same and writin’
away ... liken he is....”
Sally grabbed the binoculars and twisted them painstakingly as she
placed the strap over her head. If he hadn’t moved, then perhaps ... but
he might have heard the loud Speaker and gone to a ’phone while Emma was
sneezing ... would the loud speaker penetrate into that cupola...?
When she focused the figure again she began scrutinizing it. He had
turned. Only his back and high shoulder ... but the distance from his
ear to his collar wasn’t wasn’t....
Nobody but Cub had shoulders like that! Nobody except Cub sat that
way....