Читать книгу Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 6

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Strictly speaking, this is Tish's story, but Tish is unable to write it, being laid up, as you probably know from the newspapers. But we all three felt that a record of the affair ought to be kept while it was fresh in our minds, although goodness knows we're not likely to forget any of it. A good many people wondered, when the story came out, how Tish had come to be mixed up with it at all, but as Tish herself says, it was very simple.

The people at the hospital had become demoralized, and some firm hand had to take hold. Besides, Tish was a member of the Ladies' Committee, and felt responsible.

Tish says the first thing she knew about it was a piercing scream, just outside her room, I This was followed by a number of short, sharp cries, feminine, and steps running past her bedroom door. Now, as Tish also remarks with truth, one hears a variety of strange sounds in a hospital at night, and at first she thought it was the woman across the hall, who had had her appendix removed that afternoon, and who had been very unpleasant as a neighbor all evening. But when the noise kept up, and only died away to be followed by somebody crying hysterically down the hall, Tish was roused. She sat.up in bed and threw her small traveling clock at Miss Lewis.

(Miss Lewis was Tish's nurse, a splendid woman, but a heavy sleeper. She slept on a cot in the room, and until Tish learned that it did not hurt the clock to throw it, she had been obliged to ring for one of the night nurses to come in and waken her. So now she threw the clock. )

Miss Lewis picked the dock from off her chest and sat up, yawning, to look at it.

"Twenty minutes after one. Miss Carberry," she said. "Would you like some buttermilk?"

Now Tish was not really ill. She was taking a rest cure last autumn while her apartment was being painted and papered, and while she recovered from a twisted knee. She'd bought a second-hand automobile some months before, and learned to run it herself, and the knee was the result of her being thrown out over the steering wheel and ten feet beyond the potato wagon she had collided with. Although, as Tish says, it is a strange thing that her knee was twisted, when she brought up standing on her head in three inches of muddy water and a family of tadpoles.

Both Aggie and I went to see her daily, the three of us being old friends, although not related, and she was always glad to see us, although she grew sarcastic when Aggie casually remarked that except for the meeting of the anti-vivisection society, we might also have been flung over the potato wagon. Well—

"Would you like some buttermilk?" asked Miss Lewis again, beginning to draw on her kimono. Tish says that provoked her and she reached for the clock again, but of course Miss Lewis had it in her hand.

"No," she snapped. ''Go out in the hall and see what has happened."

Miss Lewis yawned again and groped around in the half light for her slippers. It was more than Tish could stand. She hopped out of bed in her bare feet and limped to the door.

The hall was almost dark and across it the woman with the appendix—or without—was groaning. But half way along, where the night nurse has her desk and keeps her papers and where the annunciator for the patients' bell is fastened to the wall, Tish saw a group of five or six nurses, gathered about somebody in a chair. One of them came running past with a glass of something, and the crowd opened to admit the girl and the glass and closed again. Miss Lewis came and looked over Tish's shoulder.

"Gee!" she said, and ran down the hall with her slippers flapping and her braid switching from side to side. Just then the woman across gave another groan, and it being dark and the scream still echoing in her ears, Tish reached inside the door for her cane and hobbled out in her nightgown.

The girl in the chair, she said, was as white as milk, and her lips were blue. She was half-lying, with her head against the back of the chair, and a violent shudder now and then was the only sign of life about her. One of the other nurses was stroking her hands and talking to her in a soothing tone.

"Now listen, Miss Blake,'' she said. "It couldn't be. We all have these queer feelings here. It's the nervous strain and loss of sleep. I'll never forget the first time I had to do it."

"Nor I," said another girl, "I went with you. Do you remember? It was that dwarf, that died in J. We'd forgotten something, and you had to go and leave me alone."

"Hush!" another nurse broke in, and Miss Blake began to shudder again. "If we had some hot coffee for her—will you drink some coffee if we make it. Miss Blake?"

The girl in the chair shook her head and Miss Lewis dragged one of the nurses from the group and whispered to hen Tish heard part of the answer.

"Went up with Linda Smith and as usual Linda forgot something—she's been overworking; went to raise the window for fresh air—she says she heard a sound, but didn't notice- it—when she turned around"— then more whispering that Tish couldn't catch.

"No!" Miss Lewis said, and looked queer herself. "Then, if it's true, it is still—?"

"Yes."

Miss Blake sat up just then and tried to wipe her blue lips with her handkerchief, but her hands shook so that one of the nurses did it for her. She mopped the girl's pallid forehead, too, and put her arm over her shoulders protectingly.

"You're going off duty, girl," she said. "About all the hard work in the place has been falling to you lately, and if we don't take care we will be minus the class flower."

Tish says the girl tried to smile at that and was very pretty. I can answer for her looks myself, having seen her often enough later. She had soft, wavy, black hair and Irish-blue eyes, and she was rather small. Partly for that and partly because she was so young, we fell into the way of calling her the Little Nurse. But to go back to Tish's story.

"You're sure you didn't doze off?" one of the girls asked, pressing forward. But the Little Nurse shook her head.

"Asleep! There?" she said, in a low voice. "Could you?''

"What enrages me," Miss Lewis burst out, glaring at the group through her glasses, "is ,why Linda Smith left her there alone."

"She forgot something," said Miss Blake.

"She usually forgets something!" Miss Lewis began. "When she dies, Linda'll forget—"

"Hush!" somebody whispered. "Here she is."

Miss Smith came quickly along the hall, her arms full of bundles. She stopped when she saw the group and ran her eye over it.

"Weill" she said, "what is it? Fudge?"

One of the girls detached herself from the group and started for her. Miss Smith was a tall, raw-boned woman, with short, curly hair and a rugged but good-natured face, and Tish says she stood smiling at them.

"I suppose you know," she said. "The spiritualist from K has 'passed over.' Didn't want to go, poor old man. Said he had three wives waiting in the spirit world."

The other girl came up to her then and caught her by the elbow and whispered to her. Tish was standing in the shadow, leaning on her cane, and she didn't know from Adam what was the matter, but she was covered with goose flesh.

"Nonsense!" said Miss Linda Smith suddenly. "She's been dozing."

Miss Blake got up and steadied herself by the back of the chair, looking across at the other woman.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Smith," she said. "You—remember when—when the orderlies carried up poor old—Johnson. They—laid him on the table in the mortuary, didn't they?"

"Yes," said Miss Smith, half smiling. "They usually do. They don't generally throw 'em out the window."

Miss Blake clutched the chair tighter, Tish says, and her lips trembled.

"I want you to come with me and see," she said. "We—covered the body with a sheet, didn't we?"

"Yes," Miss Smith stopped smiling.

"And then you left, and I was alone. I—I tried not to mind. I haven't been here very long. But I was afraid, after a minute or two, that I was—getting faint. I—seemed to fed eyes on me."

Some of the girls nodded as if they understood.

"So I went to the window and threw it up to get air. Then I thought I heard something moving behind me. I—I felt it, like the eyes, rather than heard it. And—I didn't look around at once; I couldn't. It was so far from ' the rest of the house, and—I was alone with it. And when I turned—" She stopped and moistened her lips with her tongue, and her face was ghastly— 'Ht was gone. Miss Smith. Gone!"

Now Tish isn't easy to frighten, but at that moment the appendix woman gave a deep groan and she says her heart jumped once or twice and turned over in her chest. The nurses were all standing huddled together in a little group, and one of them kept looking over her shoulder.

"Gone!" said Miss Smith, and sat down in a chair suddenly, as if her legs had given way. Wha—what have you done?"

Sent for Jacobs, the night watchman," one o£ the nurses explained. "Doctor Grimm and Doctor Sands are in the operating room — a night case, and the medical internes had a row with Mr. Harrison and left last night. We'll be in nice shape if G ward gets busy."

"What's G ward?" Tish asked, edging over to Miss Lewis.

"G ward," said Miss Lewis coolly, "G ward is where the stork drops that part of the population that has only half the legal number of parents. You'll have to go back to bed, Miss Carberry."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," said Tish, and glared at her.

Tish told us the rest of the story the next morning, sitting propped up in bed with Aggie on one side and me on the other. We'd brought her some creamed sweetbreads, but she was so excited she could not eat The change in her was horrible; she had passed through a crisis, and she showed it.

"You'd better let us take you home, Tish," Aggie pleaded, when Tish had finished. "This is no place for a nervous woman."

Tish took a mouthful of the sweetbread and made a face over it.

"Heavens," she said, "it's easy seen salt's cheap. No, I am not going home. I shall stay to see the end of this if it's the end of me."

"Listen, Tish," Aggie said miserably. "Hasn't my advice always been good? Didn't I beg you on my bended knees not to buy that automobile? Didn't both Lizzie and I protest with tears against the motor boat, and you'll carry that scar till your dying day. And now—now it's spirits, Tish. Don't tell me it wasn't."

"Where's that Lewis woman?" was all Tish would say. "Speaking of spirits reminds me I haven't been rubbed with alcohol yet."

But I'd better tell Tish's story in her own words:

"Once for all, before I begin, Aggie," she ordered—Tish is a masterful woman—"you open the collar of your waist and put a pillow behind you. I'm not going to be broken in on in the middle of this by your fainting away. Faint if you want, but get ready beforehand. Lewis is not usually around when she's wanted."

"I don't want to hear it if it's as bad as that," Aggie protested, opening the neck of her waist. "Lizzie, reach me that pillow."

"I don't know that I want to hear it myself, Tish," I said. "You'd better do as Aggie says and come home. You're a wreck this morning, and I've telephoned for Tommy Andrews."

Tommy is Tish's doctor, the son of her cousin, Eliza Peabody Andrews, a nice enough boy, but frivolous. He is on the visiting staff at the hospital, and makes rounds once a day, I believe, with an attentive interne at his elbow and the prettiest nurse he can find carrying the order book.

Tish set the sweetbread on the bedside table with a bang and looked at me for an instant over her glasses.

"Don't be a fool, Lizzie," she said. "Do you think Tommy Andrews can make me do anything I don't want to? Do you think the entire connection could move me one foot if I didn't want to go?"

"You can't spend another night here," I put in, somewhat feebly.

"Can't I?" she said grimly. "Not only I can, and will, but you and Aggie are going to take turns here with me, night and night about, until this is cleared up. Mark my words, last night was not the end."

She turned over on her side then, and proceeded to have her back rubbed with alcohol. And while Miss Lewis rubbed, she told us the story.

"Miss Lewis wanted me to go back to bed," she said, when she had reached that point, "but I refused to go. (You needn't take the skin off, Miss Lewis.) I stood there in my gown, and I watched them making up their minds to go to the mortuary. That's up a narrow flight of stairs from this end of the hall, not far from this very room. Nobody was anxious to lead off, but Miss Blake seemed determined to go back and prove she hadn't been asleep, and at last they moved off huddled in a group and left me there. (You haven't got a spite against my right shoulder, have you?) Miss Lewis followed them."

"I didn't," said Miss Lewis sourly. Tish turned and looked up at her over her shoulder.

"You looked as if you were going to, and you know it," she asserted. "And don't interrupt me. Miss Lewis followed, and seeing I was felling to be left alone, and feeling somewhat creepy along the back, I followed her."

"Really—!" Miss Lewis began.

"We went up the staircase, and if you and Aggie go out and look, you'll see how it leads. There's a hall up there, with a few private rooms along one side, and a small ward across. The mortuary is up a flight of about eight steps, at the far end.

"The hall was dark, and all the light came from the mortuary. The door was open, and it seemed bright and cheerful enough. I was feeling pretty sure the black-haired girl had dozed and had a dream, when I saw Miss Smith, who was in the lead, stoop and pick something up, and hold it out to the other nurses,

" That's queer!' she said, and her eyes were fairly starting out of her head.

"What is it?" said I, limping forward.

The nurses were staring at the thing she held.

" 'It's impossible?' she muttered, 'but—that's the bandage I tied Johnson's hands together with!' Miss Lewis, will you let Miss Pilkington sniff that alcohol for a moment?"

"Fiddle!" Aggie protested feebly. "I'm not at all upset" Then she put her head back on her pillow and fainted, as Tish had arranged, with decency and order.

Well, to go on, it seemed that Tish began to lose her courage about that time, and when one of the braver nurses came running back, after a hasty look, and said that Miss Blake was right, and there was no body in the mortuary, there was almost a stampede. And then it was, I believe, that heavy steps were heard on the staircase, and it proved to be Jacobs, the night watchman.

Now, Tish was in her nightgown, and I fancy, although she never confessed it, that she fell into some sort of a panic and darted into one of the empty rooms. She herself says Miss Lewis pushed her in, out of sight, and closed the door, but Miss Lewis indignantly denies this.

"I stood inside the door, in the darkness," Tish said. "The night watchman was just outside, and I could hear everything that was said, plainly. He didn't believe the body was gone, and said so. I heard him go toward the mortuary door, and the young women followed him. I could feel a chair just beside me, and my knee was jumping again, so I sat down.

"That was when I saw I'd stepped into an occupied room. There was a man in his night clothes standing not ten feet away, in the middle of the room, and I jumped up in a hurry.

" 'Good heavens!' I said, 'I didn't know there was anybody; here I You'll have to excuse me.' "

Tish is an extraordinary woman. She was apparently quite cool, but I happened to glance at Miss Lewis, and she was pouring a small stream of alcohol into the lap of Aggie's black broadcloth tailor-made. She was a pasty yellow-white.

"The man didn't say anything, although I could see him moving," Tish went on, "I thought he was rude. I got the door open and stepped into the hall, almost into the arms of the Blake girl.

" 'Well, were you right?' I asked her.

"She nodded. 'Absolutely gone, without a trace!' she said with a catch in her voice.

'Maybe he wasn't dead,' I suggested. There's a lot of catalepsy around just now.'

" 'He was dead,' she insisted. 'Quite dead. He's been dying for a week.'

"Well, what with the watchman and lights moving around, I wasn't so nervous as I had been, and I was pretty much interested.

" There's one thing sure, my dear,' I said, 'he won't go far in that state. I'll just hobble down and get my wrapper on and we'll have a search. I stepped into that room in my nightgown and I daresay the man in there nearly died himself—of the shock.'

"The man in Iheref she said. Why, all these rooms are empty, Miss Carberry!"

We stood staring at each other.

" 'There's a man in there,' I repeated. 'He stood up and stared at me when I went in.'

"She got very white, but she walked right over to the door and pushed it open. I saw her throw up her hands, and the next minute she had fallen flat on her face in the doorway, and the night watchman was running toward us with a lighted candle."

Tish leaned over and took a drink of water.

"This bed's full of crumbs. Miss Lewis," she grumbled. "It's queer to me that the only part of this hospital toast that is crisp is the part I get in the bed!"

Tor heaven's sake, Tish," I said impatiently, "I suppose she didn't faint because there were crumbs in your bed!"

"No," Tish said, hitching herself over to the other side of the mattress. "She fainted because the body of the missing spiritualist was hanging by its neck to the chandelier, fastened up with a roller towel."

"Dead?" Aggie asked, opening her eyes for the first time.

"Still dead," Tish replied grimly.