On the way back Olma Flynn stopped me.
“Eleven says he will not take his medicine, Miss Keate. What shall I do?”
I must have answered her rather vaguely and, in fact, barely heard her question. At any rate, she gave me a strange look, whirled to follow my gaze down the corridor south and, seeing nothing, faced me again.
Her eyes were very wide and her mouth hung open.
“What—what did you say, Miss Keate?”
“I’ll see about it in the morning,” I replied, quite at random. She retreated, eyeing me with trepidation, and later I saw her whispering with the student nurse in the drug room and both of them regarding me distrustfully.
Somehow the seconds dragged along. I took up my post at the chart desk, turning the chair so that it faced the long length of empty, dark corridor, and the dark space above Eighteen was visible to me.
Maida stopped at the desk now and then, and once paused to survey me curiously.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Sarah?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I replied, looking for the thousandth time at my watch. It was then a quarter of two.
She studied me oddly for a moment.
“What a night! The wind and rain is getting awfully on my nerves.” She unpinned her thermometer, took off the cap and held it closer to her eyes. “I was taking a temperature a moment ago when that loud crack of thunder came and it startled me so that I dropped the thermometer. I don’t think”—she paused to squint interestedly along the small glass tube—“I don’t think I broke it. For heaven’s sake, Sarah!” she broke off in sudden irritation. “Stop staring down the corridor. You make me edgy. What are you looking for? What do you—”
I did not hear the rest of the sentence. I sprang to my feet, peering through the semidarkness to be sure my eyes had not mistaken me.
They had not!
Gleaming above the door of Eighteen was a single, small red light!
XVII
O’Leary Tells a Story
The next thing I remember is finding myself at the door of Room 18, my fingers on the door knob, my breath coming in gasps and my heart literally in my throat.
What would the opening of that door disclose?
I took a long, shuddering breath, pushed open the door and took a few steps forward.
Intense blackness met my eyes, but through it I heard scraping sounds and heavy breathing and the impact of flesh against flesh, and the indescribable sounds of two bodies struggling together. Instinctively I stepped inside the room, closed the door behind me, and felt along the wall for the electric button.
And at that instant a vivid flash of lightning lit up the room and I caught a glimpse of two men interlocked and swaying and I heard O’Leary’s hoarse whisper.
“Don’t—turn on—the lights! Don’t—” the rest was lost.
I stood there as if frozen to the spot, longing to take a hand in things and not daring to do so. Then all at once someone said breathlessly:
“O’Leary!”
“Yes.”
“Hell.”
The men seemed to fall apart.
“All right, then! Here it is!” The words were whispered in a panting voice that I did not recognize.
Then I felt rather than saw that the slighter of the two figures tiptoed to the window next to the bed, peered through the dashing of rain outside for a moment, and then tiptoed as cautiously back.
“Into that corner! There, back of the screen! Miss Keate?”
“Yes.”
“Over here, quick!”
I stumbled a little as I passed the foot of the bed, found a hand outstretched in the darkness to guide me, and in a flash was in the darkest corner of the room, behind the burlap screen.
“Be quiet!” warned O’Leary sternly.
Beside me, breathing quickly, was that other man; as I shrank back a little I came in contact with something cold, touched it tentatively with my fingers and drew back, chilled. It was square and hard and pressing into the coat of the man at my side. It must be held in O’Leary’s hand.
And I was standing within an inch of the thing. I must have made a sudden movement for O’Leary whispered sharply again: “Hush!”
As if petrified, the three of us stood behind that burlap screen. There was not a sound in the room. As my eyes became adjusted to the darkness I found that the window near the bed was faintly visible through the crack in the screen and I glued my gaze to that crack.
Once the man at my side stirred a little and then quieted abruptly, and I had no doubt that that menacing revolver was thrust closer into his ribs.
Just as I felt that my lungs were bursting I became aware that there was a shadow, deeper than the surrounding shadows, there at the window. I blinked and peered closer. Yes, I was sure. Silently, with amazing lack of sound it crept from the window sill into the room, paused for a second and then, so silently that it did not seem to be anything human, it glided across the room and out of my little angle of vision.
Then I was aware that O’Leary was gone and simultaneously I heard a sound like the creaking of a bed spring and O’Leary’s voice, cold and hard as that vicious revolver.
“Stand where you are! Hands up! Turn on the light, Miss Keate. Hands up! I’ve got you!”
Turn on the light!
Cross that room to the door? No, here was the light above the bed! Where was the cord! Ah! My fingers grasped it, pulled convulsively and light flooded the room.
There was a muffled exclamation from the closet door. A man standing there flung his hands over his head. O’Leary was standing on
