I suppose he noted the disapproval in my face, for as we left he murmured something about having expected an important call and Seventeen being all right until he returned. In the corridor, tipped back against the door of Eighteen, lounged a policeman. Dr. Hajek regarded him speculatively but said nothing concerning his presence, which was, to my mind, an extraordinarily stupid arrangement. It seemed far better, to me, to remove the radium under guard to a place of safekeeping, but O’Leary’s business was O’Leary’s.
It seemed a singular thing that this man Hajek was at liberty to go about the hospital, his opinions deferred to by the nurses, his duty to administer to the sick, and at the same time he was most certainly involved somehow in the ugly, sordid tragedy that had befallen us. I followed his white coat through the intervening corridors and, recalling a record I had meant to look into, also into the general office. But as I bent over the filing cabinet, though every word of his brief conversation was audible to me, I could make nothing of it. It consisted of three “Yes’s,” one “No,” and finished with “All right.” Upon which he hung up the receiver and departed briskly toward the south wing and Seventeen. Miss Jones was no wiser than I, for his eyes had been on her as he talked and she had not dared listen in.
“There’s one thing I know, Miss Keate,” she said as I was about to leave. “That voice at the other end sounded for all the world like Miss Letheny’s.”
And some twenty minutes later I was quite sure that I saw Dr. Hajek going unostentatiously out the grade door toward the garage, though when the bell rang for dinner he was sitting in the general office smoking a forbidden cigar and reading the evening papers with the utmost composure.
I spent most of the intervening time wandering about the halls; I was very restless and could not settle down to anything, and altogether the afternoon was a total loss so far as anything interesting was concerned, so I was not in the best of humours at dinner.
Once I caught a fragment of conversation from a little group of nurses down at the end of the table.
“… and I said, ‘What on earth is that man doing out in the elderberry bushes in all this rain?’ and she said, ‘He is watching Room 18.’ ”
“Why are they watching Room 18?” asked Miss Ferguson, wide-eyed.
“Don’t ask me!” The first girl shrugged her shoulders. “But there have been a couple of men, besides that policeman in the south wing, hanging around all day; I don’t think they are police because they don’t wear uniforms, but they didn’t have their eyes off the windows of Room 18 all day long.”
“What do you suppose is the reason?” whispered someone in a tense, shrill whisper that carried.
“I don’t know!”
“Mercy, I’m glad I’m not on duty in the south wing,” said someone else, and all the eyes at the table immediately focused on me.
“Well, whatever it is, I wish it would be settled,” announced Miss Ferguson vigorously. “I’m getting so nervous I drop everything I touch. And my neck is stiff from twisting it to look back over my shoulder.”
Melvina Smith cleared her throat and I left the table at once. I have nothing against Melvina, but if she had been in the south wing during the past week she would have got her fill of horrors.
With the gathering darkness the feeling of impending catastrophe that had hung over us all day intensified itself. By midnight I was as jumpy as a race horse, my heart leaping to my throat at every sound and my hands shaking so that I could scarcely turn off my alarm clock and adjust my cap.
The storm had grown steadily worse and by twelve o’clock was blowing a gale with thunder and lightning making the night hideous. The old building seemed to tremble at each onslaught, and every window casing rattled and every curtain flapped and the whole place seemed to quiver and shudder as if it were alive.
On the way down to the south wing, I don’t mind saying that I suffered from something very near to stage fright, at least there was a rock in the pit of my stomach and the backs of my knees felt shaky and not to be depended upon. I very nearly shrieked when I heard footsteps back of me on the stairs, but it was only Maida, going down to duty, and together we walked through those deserted, creaking halls.
I had not been on duty more than twenty minutes when I found a note pinned to the order blank and addressed “Miss Keate”! It was sealed, and across the paper was a single sentence splashed hurriedly:
When the red light shines above 18 answer it.
I wheeled to stare down the length of corridor toward that closed, inscrutable door at its far end. The corridor lost itself in the shadows and the door was itself indistinguishable, but it seemed to me that the faraway panes of glass in the south door caught green glints of light from the shade above my head.
“When the red light shines above 18 answer it.”
What was going on in the dark room? What did it mean?
It was fortunate that I had plenty of assistance, for I could not possibly have gone about my duty with this amazing thing in my mind. In fact, I paid very little attention to the demands of the wing and alternated my gaze between my wrist watch and that shadowy end of the south wing corridor.
When the red light shines above 18!
When would it shine—what would I see upon opening that heavy gumwood door?
When the red light shines … After what seemed eons of time I strolled casually and with attempted calm in that direction. My heart began to pound violently as I approached that mysterious door. I
