“And that’s all you know?”
“Everything, sir.”
“Thank you, Sproot.” Markham rose impatiently. “And now you might let Doctor Drumm know that we are here.”
It was the nurse, however, who came to the drawing-room a few minutes later. She was a medium-sized well-built woman of thirty-five, with shrewd brown eyes, a thin mouth and a firm chin, and a general air of competency. She greeted Heath with a companionable wave of the hand and bowed to the rest of us with aloof formality.
“Doc Drumm can’t leave his patient just now,” she informed us, seating herself. “So he sent me along. He’ll be down presently.”
“And what’s the report?” Markham was still standing.
“She’ll live, I guess. We’ve been giving her passive exercise and artificial breathing for half an hour, and the doc hopes to have her walking before long.”
Markham, his nervousness somewhat abated, sat down again.
“Tell us all you can, Miss O’Brien. Was there any evidence as to how the poison was administered?”
“Nothing but an empty bouillon cup.” The woman was ill at ease. “I guess you’ll find remains of morphine in it, all right.”
“Why do you think the drug was given by means of the bouillon?”
She hesitated and shot Heath an uneasy look.
“It’s this way. I always bring a cup of bouillon to Mrs. Greene a little before eleven in the morning; and if Miss Ada’s around I bring two cups—that’s the old lady’s orders. This morning the girl was in the room when I went down to the kitchen, so I brought up two cups. But Mrs. Greene was alone when I returned, so I gave the old lady hers and put the other cup in Miss Ada’s room on the table by the bed. Then I went into the hall to call her. She was downstairs—in the living-room, I guess. Anyhow, she came up right away, and, as I had some mending to do for Mrs. Greene, I went to my room on the third floor. …”
“Therefore,” interpolated Markham, “the bouillon was on Miss Ada’s table unprotected for a minute or so after you had left the room and before Miss Ada came up from the lower hall.”
“It wasn’t over twenty seconds. And I was right outside the door all the time. Furthermore, the door was open, and I’d have heard anyone in the room.” The woman was obviously defending herself desperately against the imputation of negligence in Markham’s remark.
Vance put the next question.
“Did you see anyone else in the hall besides Miss Ada?”
“No one except Doctor Von Blon. He was in the lower hall getting into his coat when I called down.”
“Did he leave the house at once?”
“Why—yes.”
“You actually saw him pass through the door?”
“No-o. But he was putting on his coat, and he had said goodbye to Mrs. Greene and me. …”
“When?”
“Not two minutes before. I’d met him coming out of Mrs. Greene’s door just as I brought in the bouillon.”
“And Miss Sibella’s dog—did you notice it in the hall anywhere?”
“No; it wasn’t around when I was there.”
Vance lay back drowsily in his chair, and Markham again took up the interrogation.
“How long did you remain in your room, Miss O’Brien, after you had called Miss Ada?”
“Until the butler came and told me that Doctor Drumm wanted me.”
“And how much later would you say that was?”
“About twenty minutes—maybe a little longer.”
Markham smoked pensively a while.
“Yes,” he commented at length; “it plainly appears that the morphine was somehow added to the bouillon.—You’d better return to Doctor Drumm now, Miss O’Brien. We’ll wait here for him.”
“Hell!” growled Heath, after the nurse had gone upstairs. “She’s the best woman for this sort of a job that we’ve got. And now she goes and falls down on it.”
“I wouldn’t say she’d fallen down exactly, Sergeant,” dissented Vance, his eyes fixed dreamily on the ceiling. “After all, she only stepped into the hall for a few seconds to summon the young lady to her matutinal broth. And if the morphine hadn’t found its way into the bouillon this morning it would have done so tomorrow, or the day after, or some time in the future. In fact, the propitious gods may actually have favored us this morning as they did the Grecian host before the walls of Troy.”
“They will have favored us,” observed Markham, “if Ada recovers and can tell us who visited her room before she drank the bouillon.”
The silence that ensued was terminated by the entrance of Doctor Drumm, a youthful, earnest man with an aggressive bearing. He sank heavily into a chair and wiped his face with a large silk handkerchief.
“She’s pulled through,” he announced. “I happened to be standing by the window looking out—sheer chance—when I saw the curtains go down—saw ’em before Hennessey23 did. I grabbed up my bag and the pulmotor, and was over here in a jiffy. The butler was waiting at the door, and took me upstairs. Queer crab, that butler. The girl was lying across the bed, and it didn’t take but one look to see that I wasn’t dealing with strychnine. No spasms or sweating or risus sardonicus, you understand. Quiet and peaceful; shallow breathing; cyanosis. Morphine evidently. Then I looked at her pupils. Pinpoints. No doubt now. So I sent for the nurse and got busy.”
“A close call?” asked Markham.
“Close enough.” The doctor nodded importantly. “You can’t tell what would have happened if somebody hadn’t got to her in a hurry. I figured she’d got all six grains that were lost, and gave her a good stiff hypo of atropine—a fiftieth. It reacted like a shot. Then I washed her stomach out with potassium permanganate. After that I gave her artificial respiration—she didn’t seem to need it, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Then the nurse and I got busy exercising her arms and legs, trying to keep her awake. Tough work, that. Hope I don’t get pneumonia
