Jim Gainsay glanced at me rather sheepishly.
“I was telling O’Leary how it happened that I overheard most of your talk with Higgins the afternoon before his death. It struck me as foolish to let such a mine of information get away, and later in the evening I got hold of Higgins and wormed some more of the story out of him. For the most part he just repeated what he had already told you, Miss Keate. But he did tell me the scrap of conversation that he promised to tell you—remember?”
I nodded.
“It seems that he heard it when he stopped there near the south entrance on his way to see Dr. Letheny. I suppose it was this conversation as much as anything that made him suspicious of what was going on in Room 18. It seems that he knew at once who was on the other side of the bush; it was Corole and Dr. Hajek. Corole said—according to Higgins—‘To follow would be easy, now,’ and Hajek said ‘Wait till he comes out.’ Then Corole said something about it not being difficult and Hajek said ‘Leave it to me.’ Then Higgins thought he must have made some noise among the leaves, for Corole whispered ‘Hush’ and he heard them slipping away. Higgins followed but soon lost them in the dark and himself returned to the interesting vicinity of Room 18.” He paused.
“Go on,” said O’Leary grimly.
“Higgins told you how he came back to the porch and stumbled over a coat. I got him to tell me something about the coat. He said it must have been ‘one of them slickers,’ for it felt cold and oily. And at the same time he told me a peculiar thing.” Again he paused as if what he was about to say was distasteful to him. I glanced at O’Leary; his eyes still wore that strangely luminous expression. Even the glass doors of the cupboards all around us and the shining white tiles seemed to wait expectantly.
“Go on,” said O’Leary sharply, his words breaking into the crystal silence.
Jim Gainsay cleared his throat, felt in his pocket for a cigarette, remembered that he was in a hospital and replaced it.
“He said the coat smelled of—ether!”
There was a moment of silence. Then I turned to O’Leary.
“Ether! It was the same slicker! The one that I wore Friday afternoon!”
O’Leary nodded thoughtfully.
“It might be. At any rate we know that no slicker was found on the porch or about the grounds, so it is likely that the murderer of Dr. Letheny carried it away with him. We had a strict guard on St. Ann’s the day following the murders. It is barely possible that we can yet trace the coat that you wore, Miss Keate.”
“Poor Higgins,” said Jim Gainsay gravely. “I had a hard time getting him to tell me that much. He refused to the last to tell me whose face he saw there in Room 18.”
“But he failed to raise an alarm even though he had reason to think that the radium was being removed,” murmured O’Leary. “Well, that’s all now, thank you, Gainsay.”
Jim Gainsay paused for a moment outside the door and I saw him look carefully up and down the dim corridor. No white uniform was in sight, however. Thinking to facilitate his departure I took the key to the south door from its hiding place and let him out that way. When I returned O’Leary was standing under the green light, studying his small notebook. He slipped it into his pocket as I approached.
“Nothing, Miss Keate, but what you heard,” he said rather wearily. “His explanation of the note to Miss Day and his activities during the night of the murders are identical with what Miss Day tells us. He sticks to the story of his telegram to his business associates that he told at the inquest. He says he took Dr. Letheny’s car and left the grounds of St. Ann’s very soon after you met him in the dark. And that he was at a ‘corner about half a mile from St. Ann’s’ when the storm broke—which does not coincide with what we know. That is, if the lights you saw were the lights of the car he was driving, and it seems reasonable to believe that they were.”
“How about his presence here in St. Ann’s tonight at the time the radium was taken from you?”
“That got a rise out of him,” said O’Leary with an unexpected flash of whimsical satisfaction. “He was angry in a second. Every time Miss Day’s name came up he turned savage. If the radium had not disappeared I should be inclined to think that he came to St. Ann’s in the hope of seeing Miss Day, but with the radium gone again—” he stopped abruptly, his face becoming grave again and dubious.
The green light cast crawling shadows; the black window pane stared impenetrably at us; far down the corridor a light went on with a subdued click, a glass clinked thinly against something metal, and I heard the soft pad-pad of a nurse’s rubber heels.
Presently O’Leary stirred. His eyes, still shining with that very lucent look, met mine intently.
“Corole Letheny is next. Do you want to go to see her with me? Very well, then, suppose we say at eight in the morning. You might just happen into the Letheny cottage and I’ll come. I may be a little delayed.”
The remaining hours of second watch dragged a little but passed quietly, and promptly at eight o’clock I wrapped myself in my blue, scarlet-lined cape, adjusted the wrinkled folds of the detestable Bishop collar, and let myself out the south door. The path was still wet, the trees and shrubbery were veiled in heavy mist, and the whole world very sombre and desolate.
At the bridge I came upon Jim Gainsay. He was sitting disconsolately on a log a little aside from the
