Читать книгу The Greatest Works of Mary Roberts Rinehart - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 74

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Aggie's hay fever was bad that morning, and she stayed in bed. Tish and I went in and sat with her after breakfast, and she was very disagreeable.

"I shall certainly tell Tobby whad I thig of hib," she grumbled. "I told hib I could dot hold that therbobeter. That is what gave be that dreab. If it was a dreab!"

"Certainly it was a dream," said Tish.

"I'b dot so sure!" Aggie retorted.

Well, relieved of the hay fever, Aggie's story was something like this:

She had been asleep, and was dreaming' she had turned into a thermometer herself, and as she> got hotter, having too many blankets on, she said she felt herself expanding until her head touched something that she thought was the head of the bed. But she said in her dream she kept on expanding, and she was just saying to Tommy Andrews, in a fury, that if it grew any hotter she'd burst, when something gave way at the head of the bed with a sort of tearing sound, and she wakened. She said it was a full minute before she was certain she wasn't a thermometer and hadn't expanded right up through the top. Then she reached up to turn over her pillow, and just beside her was a dead foot. She had thought she was still dreaming and had actually caught hold of it. But it disappeared under her fingers, dissolved, as you might say, and there was no body. Aggie was positive about that. It was then she sat up and screamed.

Well, we kept the knowledge of what had happened to Tommy from her, and left her sitting up in bed using a nasal spray. Tish was wonderfully better after breakfast, and we walked up and down the corridor, she without the cane and hardly a limp.

It was Tish who suggested that we go into the nurses' dormitory and ask how Miss Blake was, and after we had located Miss Lewis, gossiping with the day nurse in a corner, we slipped in. Patients are forbidden in the dormitory.

The door to Miss Blake's room was closed, but somebody was inside, talking. Tish and I waited outside, and we could hardly help hearing what was said. It was a woman's voice,, familiar enough, but I couldn't place it.

"You must stay in bed, Ruth," she was pleading. "Oh, my dear, how can I forgive myself!"

'Tret me up!" Ruth Blake's voice, insistent and querulous. "They are hanging him up by the neck—" her voice died away in a groan.

The other woman broke into frightened sobbing, and Tish put her hand on the knob. But I held her back.

"I have killed her!" said the voice. "Always thinking of myself! Ruth! Listen to me!"

"Through the skylight!" babbled Ruth. "I tell you, he is dead!"

"Ruth!" begged the voice, and more sobbing, growing gradually quieter. Then silence, as if the sick girl had dropped asleep.

Tish and I slipped away, and back through the connecting door to our room. Once there, by common mute consent we left the door into the corridor open and took up such positions as enabled us to watch the people who passed along the hall. Ten minutes brought nobody. Then we heard the door open, and brisk steps coming along the hall.

"Well," said Miss Linda Smith, in her cheerful way, "Well, how's the knee this morning. Miss Carberry?"

"Better," Tish replied genially.

"That's fine," said Miss Smith and hurried along, humming a bit of a song. Tish and I looked at each other. In spite of the cheerfulness, of the eyes bathed in cold water and carefully powdered, it was Miss Smith's voice we had heard in the Blake girl's room.

But when we got to talking it over we couldn't see that what we had heard had really any importance. Miss Smith had left the girl alone in the mortuary, and was reproaching herself for having done it. That was all. But as Tish said, what did she mean by saying she was always thinking of herself? It was hardly, as Tish pointed out, an act of supreme selfishness to go down and get an armful of sheets to cover a corpse!

Tommy came in at eleven o'clock, freshly shaved and linened, and apparently as well as ever. He had been over to see Miss Blake first, but found her sleeping, which he considered a good sign. I noticed that he kept his right hand in his pocket, and did not use the arm at all. He said the shoulder was stiff, naturally, and that he must have been sleep-walking himself to get over that fence and through the skylight the way he had.

"Sleep-walking!" said Tish sharply. "Do you think that that girl was sleep-walking?"

"I certainly do," said Tommy.

"Then you are a fool," said Tish. "If she was sleep-walking, so was the burglar who took my disciple spoons last fall. Sleep-walking!"

"I wish you—"

"You're wishing me bad luck if you feel the Way you look!" said Tish shrewdly. "Now, Tommy, I'm going to get to the bottom of all this, and so are you. It will take twice the amount of effort separated as united. Don't try any evasions with me—half a truth is worse than a good lie. Now—out with it. What really happened on the roof last night?"'

"I wish I knew!" said Tommy, and looked at us gravely. "You saw what there was to see up-stairs. I happened to see Miss Blake going up the stairs with the candle, and I noticed something strange in her expression. I followed her and you followed me. She went into each room and then to the mortuary. That's proof, isn't it, that she was sleep-walking? I've worried over it all night, and I'm sure of it. Anyhow, why should she take a candle, when there is electric light everywhere? I tell you, the shock of the night before was on the girl's mind while she slept."

Tish had got out her sheet of letter paper. Well?" she said, putting something down. I saw her go into the mortuary, and I heard her talking; I couldn't make out what she said. Then there was a crash, and I ran. When I got there one of the stained glass windows was wide open, and she was climbing up the fire-escape outside. The candle had gone out. Aunt Tish, that fire-escape up there is the merest skeleton, and it is five high stories from the ground. Awake, she couldn't have done it."

"Humph!" said Tish. "It isn't hard at night, when you can't see how far it is to the ground." Then, seeing that Tommy was looking sulky, she added: "Still, you may be right."

"Up to that point," said Tommy, "I'm perfectly dear. I was out on the escape by the time she got to the roof, and I lost her there. I saw her again, however, when I climbed on the roof, and went toward her. I've heard a lot about the danger of waking sleep-walkers suddenly, and I spoke to her quietly. I said 'Miss Blake.'"

"Yes?"

"Well," he confessed, "that's about all I remember. Or no, it isn't. The girl was asleep, and not responsible. She turned like a flash when I spoke, and cried out, and—I think she threw her brass candlestick at me! Then—I seemed to be falling forward—and when I knew anything again I was in the hall below."

"Having fainted over a four-foot fence!" Tish observed sharply. "Tommy, that won't do."

"I give you my word. Aunt Tish," he said, "I haven't any idea how I got over that fence and through that skylight."

"I have!" Tish said, and put away her note-paper. We both stared at her and Tommy even smiled.

"Exactly," he said. "I've thought of that, but how do you account for the fact that not a patient left his ward or private room last night? That every servant and nurse was in his proper place? Jacobs and I took pains to find that out. And that I've got as pretty a bite in my right shoulder as you would care to see?"

"Bite!" Tish exclaimed, and reached feebly for the note-paper.

"Bite!" I repeated. "Then it must be an animal—!"

"Who knows?" Tommy said quietly. "Jacobs and I got it cauterized. I don't want the internes to get hold of the story—they're apt to talk to the nurses. I hardly know what to do next Since Mr. Harrison had the trouble last night with the two medical men, he is too busy holding down his job to have much time for anything else. If there is to be anything done, I rather think it's up to me" "It's up to us!" said Tish firmly.