“Isn’t this awful!” she cried. “Where were you! Every window in the wing was open. And the lights have gone out! What—what in the world are you doing?”
She was at my elbow in Room 18. My fingers shook so that I could scarcely light the candle, and when I did succeed it made only a feeble little flicker that did not dispel the shadows.
She followed me to the bed.
“Why, Sarah! Is he—” She reached over to place her hand on his face as I had done. “He is dead!”
Setting the candle on the table, I pushed aside the covers to find his heart. If there were the least flicker of life, something could yet be done. But there was not.
It was as I drew back that I made the astounding discovery.
The box that held the radium was gone! Adhesive and all had been stripped clean!
“Look—” I tried to cry out but a roll of thunder that shook the very foundations drowned my voice. I pointed with a finger that shook and held the futile little flame nearer, while Maida searched frantically among the sheets.
It was a useless search. That I knew even in the moment of lowering my candle to look under the bed. The dead man had not torn from himself that box with the wide strips of adhesive.
Arising from my knees I stared across the narrow bed into Maida’s panic-stricken eyes.
The very storm outside quieted for a second as if to give my words significance.
“He is dead,” I whispered. “And the radium is gone!”
She nodded, her hands at her throat, her face as white as her cap.
The tiny flame wavered and jumped and threatened to go out, the shadows in the room crept nearer, the gusts of wind and rain beat upon the black window pane with renewed fervour.
“We must telephone to Dr. Letheny. Then get lights and see to the wing. Will you go down to the office and telephone to the Doctor? I shall stay—with this.”
Maida’s eyes widened and she flung out her hands with an odd gesture of panic.
“No,” she stammered. “No. I—I can’t call Dr. Letheny!”
Not knowing what to say I stared at her. Suddenly she straightened her shoulders and mastered her agitation.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll call him immediately.”
I was too disturbed to worry over Maida’s aversion to telephoning to Dr. Letheny, although it was to recur to me later. I set the candle down again, wishing that the lights would come on and that my knees would not shake.
It was clear to me, even in those first terrifying moments, that the radium had been stolen. And a hideous conjecture was slowly settling upon me. It did not seem possible that my patient had died a natural death!
What had caused his death?
It is strange how one’s hair prickles at the roots when one is frightened. My hair stirred and I peered fearfully about the room. A curious sense of something evil and loathsome near at hand was creeping over me. The room, however, was as bare as any hospital room. I even took the candle in my hand, and holding my teeth tight together to restrain a disposition toward chattering, I made a circuit of the room, holding the candle into the corners. Of course, there was nothing there. Indeed, there was scarcely any place to hide in the whole room. There were the usual shallow closets, two of them, barely large enough for a patient’s travelling bag and clothes. I opened one closet which held a bag and a light overcoat. The other one was locked and the key gone, probably lost by some student nurse.
The candle was dripping hot wax on my hand so I placed it again on a saucer on the table.
Maida had been gone for some time, surely time enough to rouse the whole hospital staff. A thousand fears crossed my mind while I stood there waiting; my eyes kept travelling from one corner of the room to the other, and the feeling of a presence near me other than that of the dead man on the bed became stronger with the dragging seconds.
I was beginning to think that I could remain no longer in that fear-haunted room, with only the ghastly flickering of the candlelight for company, when there was a quick rush of footsteps and Maida was in the room, panting, her eyes black and frightened.
“Dr. Letheny is out,” she cried. “Corole didn’t know where he was. She said he wasn’t anywhere in the house. She thought he had gone for a walk in the orchard and got caught in the storm.”
“A fine time to go for a walk,” I cried, fright making me irritable.
“So then I telephoned to Dr. Balman,” went on Maida hurriedly. “It was so dark I couldn’t see the directory, so I had to ask Information for the number. He finally answered and said he would be right out. It’s as dark as a black cat all over the building.”
“Did you call Dr. Hajek?”
“Yes. That is, I knocked at his door and called him several times but couldn’t wake him. Girls from other wings are running around in the dark, there near the general office. Nobody has lights and the bell that connects with the basement is out of order. At least, they can’t rouse Higgins.”
I thought rapidly. Such a situation! No lights, a storm, frightened patients—it only needed the news of the radium theft and this strange death to complete our demoralization.
“We can’t both leave this room,” I thought aloud. “We must not leave him alone. His death is so strange—so—”
Maida must have been struck with something in my manner for she gripped my arm.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I replied with difficulty, speaking through oddly stiff lips, “I mean that—I’m afraid this is—is murder.”
She shrank back, her face as white as the
