12:06 a. m.—The Stillness of a Grave
Lieutenant Valcour went to the head of the stairs.
“O’Brian!” he called down.
O’Brian looked up at him from below.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Send Hansen up here, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
A painting on the wall held Lieutenant Valcour’s attention while he
waited. A Gauguin, he thought, and, going closer, confirmed it. His
eye drifted over the entire corridor. Everywhere were the details of
great wealth, and the young owner of it all not a happy child of kind
fortune, but a detested, a passionately hated, and a passionately
loved man. There flashed again before him in brief review Mrs.
Endicott, a storehouse of mountain storms in summer; Mrs. Siddons,
spiritual ash; Roberts, the shortest step this side of some fervour
bred in the swamps of lunacy; Hollander—Marge Myles—who knew? And
would one ever know? Suppose, as Dr. Worth had more than hinted,
Endicott should refuse to speak—if that strange reticence harped upon
so insistently both by his wife and his physician should resist . . .
“Lieutenant, sir, Officer Hansen reporting.”
Lieutenant Valcour dragged his eyes from the Gauguin unwillingly.
“All right, Hansen,” he said. “Come with me.”
They went down the corridor and stopped before the door to Endicott’s
room.
“Do you know what’s gone on here to-night, Hansen?”
“From what I’ve heard, sir, the man who was thought dead is now
alive.”
“That is correct.”
Lieutenant Valcour opened the door and beckoned to Cassidy. Cassidy
came out and joined them.
“When you two men go back into that room,” Lieutenant Valcour said, “I
want you to get a couple of chairs and sit down just inside the
bathroom doorway. Put the chairs where you can watch the bed and this
hall door. If you talk, use a low voice that won’t disturb either the
patient or the nurse, and from the moment when she indicates that he’s
returning to consciousness, say nothing at all and sit still. The
shock of knowing that you were there might disturb his heart again. Is
that clear?”
They assured him, in unison, that it was.
“This hall door,” Lieutenant Valcour went on, “is going to be kept
locked on the inside by the nurse. Every time she opens it, watch
carefully. Keep your eye on anyone who comes into the room, especially
if they offer some excuse for wanting to be there—and when I say
‘anyone,’ I mean just that. For instance: the nurse might want some
coffee and ring for a servant. Watch that servant every second, until
she goes and the door is locked again. While on the subject of coffee,
you will drink none that may be offered you while you’re on watch.”
“I never drink coffee, Lieutenant,” said Cassidy. “Now if it was a cup
of tea——”
“If you get thirsty,” said Lieutenant Valcour severely, “take some
water from the tap. And eat nothing at all. I don’t want to have to
come back here and find you both groggy with knock-out drops and with
heaven-knows-what happened to Endicott. Mind you, I’m not suggesting
that anything like this will happen—but it might. Clear?”
Again, in unison, they assured him it was all most clear.
“Keep in mind,” Lieutenant Valcour went on, “that primarily you are in
a sick-room over which Dr. Worth has absolute charge. You are not to
interfere with anything he may do, or with any arrangements he may
make during the night. You are only to step in if you see that
Endicott’s life is threatened through the action of some person who
may approach him. Try to prevent this by physically overpowering the
attacker if you can, but if there is no time for that do not hesitate
to shoot.”
“Even if it’s a woman, Lieutenant?” said Hansen quietly.
Lieutenant Valcour shrugged. “There are no such things,” he said
evenly, “as sex or chivalry in murder.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am painting, incidentally, the darkest prospect of the picture. In
all probability nothing will happen at all. You’ll spend a sleepless
and tiresome night, get cricks in your necks, and damn the day you
ever joined the force. Now, then, there is one thing more, and that
concerns a man by the name of Thomas Hollander. Dr. Worth believes it
advisable that an intimate friend of Endicott be near him and be the
first person whom Endicott sees when he recovers consciousness. Mr.
Hollander is that friend. I am going to try to get in touch with him
shortly, explain matters to him, and get him to come up here. Mr.
Hollander is naturally the exception to my previous instructions. Let
him alone. Don’t interfere with him, but—” Lieutenant Valcour’s pause
was significantly impressive “—watch him. Watch him, my good young
men, as two harmonious cats might watch a promenading and near-sighted
mouse. Shall I repeat?”
“I get you, Lieutenant,” said Cassidy. And Hansen, he was assured, had
“got” him, too.
“Then we will go in, and you will establish yourselves for the night
at once.”
He opened the door, and they went inside. Dr. Worth’s arrangements
were complete, and he was ready to turn in. Nurse Murrow had received
her instructions and was to call Dr. Worth should Endicott show any
symptoms of returning consciousness.
Dr. Worth joined Lieutenant Valcour at the door.
“There is nothing further we can do for the present, Lieutenant,
except wait,” he said.
“All right, Doctor. I’ve told my men how things stand.” He nodded
toward Cassidy and Hansen, who, on tiptoe, were vanishing into the
bathroom with two chairs. “I’ve told them you’re in charge here, and
that there’s not to be an unnecessary sound or move out of them.”
Dr. Worth continued to remain politely incredulous. “Well, I dare say
you know what you are doing, but it still seems an extraordinary
precaution to me.”
“And it probably is. I spoke to one of the maids about your staying
here, Doctor.”
“Yes—thank you. They’ve told me where my room is. It’s the one
directly above this one.”
“I’ve also lined up one of Endicott’s friends. I’m getting in touch
with him directly, and when he comes I’ll have him sent up to you. You
can tell him just what you want him to do, and then see that he gets
in here all right, if you will, please.”
“By all means. Who is he, Lieutenant?”
“A Mr. Thomas Hollander—lives on East Fifty-second Street.”
“Never heard of him; but there’s no reason why I should have.” He sped
a parting look toward Endicott, faintly breathing on the bed. “The
most reticent man, Lieutenant, whom I have ever met.”
They went outside and closed the door.
Nurse Murrow went over and locked it. She felt, to put it mildly, not
a little atwitter. Her life had not conformed to the popular version
of a trained nurse’s. There had been no romantic patients in it whose
pallid, interesting brows she had smoothly divorced from fever by a
gentle pass or two with magnetic fingers. No grateful millionaire had
offered her his heart and name; nor had any motherly eyed old dowager
died and willed her a fortune. No. There had been, on the other hand,
a good many years of sloppy, disillusioning, grilling work, long hours
spent in pampering peevish patients, patients who were ugly with that
special ugliness which is inherent in the sick, snappish doctors, and
a perfect desert of romance.
The present case loomed as a heaven-sent oasis. Who knew what might
not develop out of it? It awakened all the atrophied hunger of her
starved sentimentalism. And even if nothing _did_ result from
it—nothing practical, like marriage, or a good bonus—it would at least
leave her something to think about during those endless, tiresome,
tiring hours of the future. . . .
She crossed to the bed and looked down at Endicott. She felt his pulse
and made a notation on her night chart. She lingered near the bathroom
doorway.
“The strangest case,” she whispered, “that I’ve ever been on.”
Cassidy looked up at her bleakly.
Hansen said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I dare say,” she whispered on, “that it’s quite in the ordinary run
of things for you gentlemen.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There’s an atmosphere—a something sinister——”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nurse Murrow’s broad shoulders jerked impatiently. There was a
talk-chilling quality in being so determinedly ma’am’d. She gave it
up, and settled herself starchily in an armchair. She adjusted a lamp
so that it shaded more efficiently her eyes.
A floor board creaked upstairs—once.
That would be Dr. Worth, she decided, going to bed. What a man! What a
shining light in his profession! A little bigoted, perhaps, in some
things, but so distinguished—admirable—a bachelor, too—— But what
nonsense!
A complete stillness settled gently on the house. The stillness of a
grave.
Yes, she thought, just exactly that—the stillness of a grave. . . .