Читать книгу Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 10

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Now Aggie has hay fever, and the slightest excitement, any time in the year, starts her off. So when we heard her sneezing as we went down the stairs, we were not surprised to find Tommy Andrews In front of her with an order book on his knee, and Aggie trying to hold a glass thermometer in her mouth.

'I can't," she was protesting around the thermometer. "Justh try sneething yourself with a—a—choo."

Her teeth came down on it just then with a snap and her face grew agonized.

"There!" she said. "What did I tell you?" And pulled the thermometer out minus an end.

"Where's the rest?" Tommy demanded.

"I—I swallowed it!"

Tommy jumped up. and looked frightened.

"Great heavens, it's glass I" he said. "What in thunder—why, there it is in your lap!"

"I swallowed the inside," Aggie said stiffly. "I should think that's bad enough. It's poison, isn't it?"

Tommy laughed. "It won't hurt you," he said. "It's only quicksilver."

But Aggie was only partly reassured. "I daresay I'll be coated inside like the back of a mirror," she snapped. "Between being frightened to death until I'm in a fever, and then swallowing the contents of a thermometer, and having it expand with the heat of my body, and maybe blow up, I feel as though I'm on the border of the spirit land myself."

In spite of Tommy's reassurances, she refused to be comforted, and sat the rest of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. She ate no luncheon, and she absolutely refused to go home. Aggie is like most soft-mannered people, trying to make her do something she doesn't want is like pounding a pillow. It seems to give way, and the next minute it's back where it was at first, and you can pound till your hands ache. So when she said she was going to stay at the hospital until she felt sure the mercury wasn't going to blow up or poison her, we had to yield.

We got the room next to Tish's and put her to bed, and she lay there alternately sneezing and sleeping the rest of the day. I went out during the afternoon and brought a nightgown for her and one for myself, and the mentholated cotton wool for her nose. The walk did me good, and by the time I got back I was ready to sneer at footprints that go up a wall and Johnson hanging to a chandelier.

As I left the elevator at Tish's door, I met Miss Linda Smith and stopped her. "Is there anything new?" I asked.

"Nothing, except that Miss Blake has been sent back to bed," she said. "She's a nervous little thing anyhow, and she has not been here very long. When she has had almost three years, as I have, she'll learn to let each day take care of itself—not to worry about yesterday or expect anything of to-morrow."

"And how about to-day?" I asked, smiling at the contradiction of her pessimistic speech and her cheerful face.

"And to work like the deuce to-day," she said, and went smiling down the hall.

I had brought in some pink roses, and when I'd put Aggie's nightgown on her and the wool in her nose, I had Miss Lewis take me to Miss Blake's room.

It was close at hand. If you know the Dunkirk Hospital, you know that the nurses' dormitory is directly beside the main building, and connected with it by doors on every floor. One of these doors was at the end of Tish's corridor, and Miss Blake's room was the first on the 'other side.

Miss Lewis knocked and tried the door, but it was bolted.

"Who's there?" asked a startled voice, quite close, as if it's owner had been standing just inside.

"Miss Lewis, dear."

"Just a moment."

She opened the door almost immediately and admitted us. She had on only her night gown and slippers, and her hair was down in a thick braid. I have reached the time of life when I brush most of my hair by holding one end of it in my teeth, so I always notice hair.

"You're up," said Miss Lewis accusingly.

"Only to be sure the door was fastened," she protested, and got into her single bed again obediently.

"Now don't be silly!" Miss Lewis said-"Why should you lock that door in the middle of the afternoon? I thought you were the girl who rescued the kitten from the ridge pole of the roof!"

"That was different," said Miss Blake, and shut her eyes.

"I don't want to disturb you," I said. "Only—my friend and I felt sorry that she caused you such a shock last night. And I want you to have these flowers."

She seemed much pleased and Miss Lewis put them on the table by the bed, beside another bouquet already there, a Huge bunch of violets and lilies of the valley. Violets and lilies of the valley are Tommy's favorite combination!

"Doctor Andrews been here this afternoon?" Miss Lewis asked, looking up from arranging the roses.

"Once—twice," said the little nurse, with heightened color.

"I see," said Miss Lewis. "And the husband of thirty-six telephoning all over the city for him."

"The husband of thirty-six!" I repeated, astounded. They both laughed, and Miss Blake looked for a moment almost gay.

"He is not a Mormon," she said. "It's a case of 'container for the thing contained.' Thirty-six is a room."

I think the laugh did the little nurse good, but when we left, a few minutes later. Miss Lewis halted me a few steps from the door. We heard her cross the room quickly and the bolt of the door slip into place.

"Queer, isn't it?" asked Miss Lewis. And I thought it was.

Tommy Andrews came back late that night to see Aggie, but she had stopped sneezing and dropped into a doze. He beckoned me out into the hall.

"How is she?" he asked. "Having been quick-silvered inside, I daresay she's been reflecting! Never mind. Miss Lizzie—I couldn't help that."

"Tish wants to see you. Tommy," I said. "She—we found something this afternoon and I don't mind saying we are puzzled."

"More mystery?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "Don't tell me somebody else has shed his fleshy garment and hung it up— "

"Please don't," I said, looking over my shoulder nervously. The hall was almost dark.

"Look here," Tommy suggested in a whisper, "I'll make a bargain with you. I'll go in and listen to Aunt Tish without levity—I give you my word, no frivolity—if you'll come over and play propriety while I see Miss Blake."

Seeing me eye him, he went on guiltily: "She's—sick, you know, and I've been there two or three times to-day already. If it gets out among the nurses— please, dear, good Aunt Lizzie!"

Now, I'm not his aunt. For that matter, I'm a good ten years younger than Tish, but he's a handsome young rascal, and when a woman gets too old to be influenced by good looks, it's because she's gone blind with age, so I agreed on one condition.

"Yes, if you'll see Tish first," I said, and he agreed.

That was how we happened to be in Tish's room when Aggie screamed. Tish had just got to the footprint-on-the-wall part of her story, and even Tommy was looking rather queer, when Aggie sneezed. Then almost immediately she shrieked and the three of us were on our feet and starting for the door before she stopped. As we reached the hall, a nurse was running toward us, and the stillness in Aggie's room was horrible.

It was dark. Which was strange, for Fd left the night light on at Aggie's request. Tommy pushed into the room first.

"Where's the light switch?" he demanded. "Are you there. Miss Aggie?"

There was no answer, but in the darkness every one heard a peculiar rustling sound, such as might be made by rubbing a hand over a piece of stiff silk. It was the nurse who found the switch almost instantly, and I think we expected nothing less than Aggie hanging by her neck to the chandelier. But she was lying quietly in bed, in a dead faint.

When she came to, she muttered something about a dead foot and fainted again. By-eleven o'clock she seemed pretty much herself once more and even smiled sheepishly when Tommy suggested that it had been the fault of the thermometer. She thought herself that she had dreamed it, and Tish and I let her think so. But both of us had seen the same thing.

Just over the head of Aggie's bed the pipe molding was wrenched loose and pulled down out of line!