So I looked up the number in the telephone book and tried it. But though I tried and tried, the line was busy and kept busy and I had to give up in order to be on time at the south wing.
Olma Flynn was waiting for me and Maida already busy about twelve-o’clock temperatures.
“Eleven is doing pretty well tonight,” said Olma as we bent over the charts. “Three has a degree or so of fever but has been fairly quiet. Oh, by the way, have you the key to the south door?”
“No.”
She frowned.
“I couldn’t find it. I had to leave the south door unlocked.”
“Couldn’t find it!”
“No. It wasn’t anywhere about the desk.”
“Did you look in the lock?”
“Of course, Miss Keate. And I asked the other girls. No one has seen it since morning.”
In view of the existing circumstances, I suppose it was natural that I should feel immediately alarmed. After Olma had gone wearily away to bed I gave the chart desk and its vicinity a thorough search.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Maida, coming along just as I had taken all the charts out of the rack and was feeling about with my fingers in the recesses left empty.
“Looking for the key to the south door,” I replied. “Have you seen it?”
“No. I have not seen it since last night.”
She waited for a moment, watching me rearrange the charts.
“I wish this trouble were all cleared up,” she said, her voice sombre.
“So do I.” I replaced the last chart and turned to face her. The greenish light from above the desk made her face worn and colourless and cast a sickly green glow over our white dresses.
“If we don’t find it tomorrow I shall have to have a new key made. I suppose we can leave the south door unlocked tonight,” I decided irresolutely. “I don’t like to; I have had enough of people prowling through our wing.”
Maida’s shadowed eyes met mine and she shivered slightly; she attempted to smile but her lips pulled tautly.
“It is getting to disturb me more and more,” she admitted. “Think of this, Sarah: it has been only four days since that dinner party of Corole’s. Is it possible! So much has happened. It seems like months.”
“This is Tuesday.” I calculated, “That was last Thursday night—no, Maida, five days.”
“Well, five days then,” she assented lifelessly. “What a five days! If it would only turn warm and summery and sunshiny again, I do believe things would be better off. I’m sure I should be at least!”
“I dislike this constant drizzle,” I agreed, without much spirit. “There is something honest and wholehearted about real rain, but weather like this is wretched.”
“Everything I touch is clammy like—like a dead man.” She whispered the last words and I think they came as a surprise to her, for she looked frightened and a little shocked.
A small red light shone down the corridor above a door and I started to answer it.
“Don’t forget to—er—”
“Keep my eyes on the south door?” finished Maida with a bleak smile.
“Exactly.” I tried to smile, too. I remember thinking, as I walked briskly toward the signal, that our words were not unlike those of soldiers going into battle—in spirit, at least. I saw something of that in 1918; I was in a hospital that was once, mistakenly I hope, shelled. In a choice between the shelled hospital on that lurid front and the dreary, clammy nights of second watch at St. Ann’s, where every stir made your breath catch, and every whispering noise made your skin crawl, I’d much prefer the shelled hospital. There the terror was expected; its source was known. Here, every doorway was a silent menace; every room and every turn and every alcove might harbour death. The hospital seemed too roomy, too large, too dark. Our very skirts seemed to whisper and hiss with fear along those blank corridors and empty walls and half-lights and shadows.
I had left the door of the general office open and while going about my work listened for the telephone. Dr. Hajek is supposed to answer it at night, having his room off the office for that purpose, but I hoped that if I heard the ring when O’Leary first called, I would be able to get to the telephone by the time Fred Hajek, who is a heavy sleeper, was aroused.
And when I finally heard the subdued buzz I happened to be at the chart desk and simply dropped pen and all and ran through the corridor that connects us with the main portion of the hospital.
I took the receiver off the hook and was panting so heavily that I had to wait for a second to catch my breath before answering. The door to Dr. Hajek’s room remained closed and Dr. Balman, in the inner office, had not been aroused either, so I must have made the distance in nothing flat—whatever that is—I picked up the term from a patient who was interested in sports and believe it to mean a very rapid pace.
It was O’Leary, of course.
“This is Miss Keate,” I said in a low voice, hoping that the sound of it would not carry past those closed doors. “I am very anxious to see you.”
He must have caught the urgency in my voice.
“Shall I come right out?”
“Yes. At once.”
“Very well. In fifteen minutes.”
The receiver clicked, I hung up my own softly, straightened my cap and walked back to the south wing. Maida was not to be seen. I sat down at the desk and found that in my haste to get to the telephone I had upset the red ink I was in the act of using. It was meandering gayly across the desk, reddening everything it touched, and I seized some trash out of the waste basket for a blotter. It was while I was mopping up the ink that all at once, without even a warning flicker, the light above the desk went out, leaving
