I was on duty at the time, Maida assisting me as usual, and our force augmented again, according to another whim of Miss Dotty’s, by two training nurses, both obviously unnerved at their contact with the south wing of such ill repute. Their blue-and-white striped skirts rattled nervously as they trotted here and there about the wing. While I did not feel unduly alarmed myself, still it seemed all too clear that the guilty one was still about, an unknown menace and hence more terrible, and I don’t mind admitting that my ears were alert to any alien sounds.
I was sitting at the chart desk when I heard O’Leary’s quick, light steps coming along the corridor from the general office. I turned to watch him approach, his gray suit and grave, keen face gradually emerging into the green circle of light that surrounded me.
“Have you found the radium?” I asked at once.
He shook his head.
“Nor who took it from you?”
“Nor who took it—naturally.” He dropped into a chair beside me. “Now, Miss Keate, tell me exactly how you came upon it.”
Feeling that it was no time to mince matters I complied, much as I disliked the implications the story involved. He listened thoughtfully, drawing a red pencil from his pocket and actually using it to scribble some notes in a small, shabby notebook he brought forth. He did not comment when I had finished, save to ask if Miss Day was on duty. And at the moment Maida herself entered the corridor from some sick room, O’Leary rose and intercepted her at once and the two disappeared into the drug room.
I was left to wait, always a difficult task for one of my temperament and particularly unpleasant that night. It seemed hours but was actually not more than twenty minutes by my watch, before they emerged. Maida’s chin was in the air, her cheeks quite scarlet, and her eyes flashing blue fire, but O’Leary was imperturbable. He stopped for a word with me and I suppose noted the anxiety which I was at no pains to hide. He smiled into my gaze a bit ruefully.
“She has a reason for everything,” he said quietly. “If I could only be sure that she is telling the truth!”
“She always tells the truth!” I cried indignantly.
“I hope so—” he hesitated. “It is difficult to explain, but all through her story I had the strangest impression that she had—rehearsed the whole thing.”
“What did she say of the radium?”
“Says she found it in a pot of lobelia that was in the hall outside Room 18. She noted that the flowers were withered and needed water, took it to the kitchen to water, noted that it had been disturbed and—found the radium hidden below the plant! She took the radium to her own room until she could get in touch with me. She says she did not know that I was in the hospital after the inquest until she saw me leaving.”
“That is true,” I said quickly. “And I remember the pot of lobelia, too. Only—” I wrinkled my forehead thoughtfully. “Why, the last I saw it, the thing was still in Room 18! Not in the corridor, at all!”
“When did you see it last?” he asked quickly.
“Last night—about dusk.”
He looked at me soberly.
“Then the man in Room 18 last night—if it was a man—must have hidden the radium for fear he would be caught with the incriminating box. He must have thrust it hurriedly into the flower pot and left plant and all in the corridor in the hope of being able to get hold of the radium more easily than if it were left again in Room 18. That is, if we are to believe Miss Day’s statement. Positively that lobelia was not in Room 18 when I examined the room almost immediately after Higgins’s death. I did not miss a square inch!”
I was still thinking of Maida.
“Did you ask her about the hypodermic syringe?”
He nodded.
“She says that she found her own needle had disappeared, naturally disliked calling anyone’s attention to the fact, in view of the existing circumstances, and simply substituted your tool for the lost one. She says she acted hastily and only from a dislike of being even remotely connected with the tragedies. My own opinion is that someone advised her to do so. Especially since there was a cut-and-dried air about everything she said.”
“How did the hypodermic syringe get out there in the shrubbery?”
“Miss Day insists that she knows nothing of that. And I’m more than half inclined to believe her, there.”
“The cuff link?” I persisted anxiously.
His clear eyes narrowed.
“The cuff link is the reason that I doubt her whole story. She still declared that she lost the cuff link and that Dr. Letheny must have picked it up. If she would only tell me the truth about that!” He pulled a yellow slip of paper from his notebook. I recognized it immediately. It was the note Jim Gainsay had written and asked me to take to Maida.
“Read it,” said O’Leary.
Thinking it more discreet to say nothing of my own connection with the note, I did as he requested. It was headed: “Friday afternoon” and read thus:
Must see you at once. Important. C. knows about last night. Say nothing and let me advise you. Will wait at the bridge. Very anxious since news of this afternoon. Be warned. Cannot urge too emphatically. Please meet me at bridge.
It was signed with a vigorously scrawled “J. G.”
I read the thing, read it again and raised my eyes to O’Leary’s.
“It was found in Miss Day’s room,” he explained. “In a pocket of a uniform, in fact; when I asked her to explain it she said at first that it was a message of a personal nature and that she would not explain it. I was forced to urge and she finally admitted exactly three things. First, that the note was written by Jim
