Part 12

Matt Higgins tipped his gray hat over his narrowed eyes, and went through the door.

That man knew something ... but there was no use trying to get him to....

He turned down Beeker Street and made his way over to Wilson Boulevard, one end of which was façaded by the Elijah Wilson group; the other was bounded by the River. He looked back over his shoulder to see if he could get a glimpse of anything denoting the river. Only a curling line of smoke from a ferry-boat.

The air was clear, still and comforting and the people all walked like New Yorkers. But the women didn’t amount to much. No good legs. No poise. No New York verve.

He looked at his watch as he entered the tall iron gate and approached the main entrance. It was eight forty-five.

At the main entrance he took off his gray overcoat and stood back to let two nurses pass. They weren’t much.

He passed the statue of Elijah Wilson, went on into the main corridor and turned to the left. He walked with the air of a man who knows where he is going and is not to be stopped by trifles. Long experience had taught him that demeanor could get one almost anywhere. Especially in a hospital.

Nurses and doctors passed, returning from breakfast. The faces of the lovelorn and the love-lettered were revealed by every passing window. Intermingled with all of these were a group of abnormally sad faces, and then he remembered that today was the day of that nurse’s funeral. She’d been a pretty little thing, too. Her fragile little corpse had skipped rope in all of his dreams last night! He quickened his pace and his hairy hands were clenched in his pockets.

Halfway down the main corridor he stopped ostensibly to look from a window at the back garden of the hospital. He took in the approaching people in both directions at a glance. They were all of them distant enough to risk it.

He walked several feet further, began walking close to the wall, and faded into a door. The door opened into what had been the old laboratory building, and with the renovating of the hospital had been left vacant. The corridor was lighted by a series of tall windows at the far end. The brilliant morning sun sifted through them vaguely. The grime and dust of the panes and of the intervening corridor made its trickle thin and eerie.

Matthew Higgins closed the door softly and stood silently against it for a second, listening. Then he accustomed his eyes to the light and looked at the floor. In the center were the tracks he and Dr. MacArthur and Snod had made last night. On the far side were the tracks which he and Snod had agreed Snod should make this morning.

He shifted his hat upon the back of his head and began walking up the corridor next to Snod’s morning tracks. Halfway up, he stopped and listened. Then he threw his overcoat over his shoulder and approached, cautiously, the door of the laboratory they had decided upon. On tiptoe. Silently. His weight was thrown forward with the expert training of a toe-dancer. Slowly, melting into it as he did so, he pushed open the door of the laboratory.

It was darker than the corridor. The outside window blinds had been closed for several years. He stood silently several seconds and then decided to chance a match. He took off his hat and struck it carefully in the shadow the hat provided. Then when it was well-lighted he lifted it and surveyed the room.

The dusty lab sinks, the rotting rubber hose, the two stools with their cane bottoms gone, and upon a bamboo couch in the corner Snod Smooty, his face totally devoid of expression, sleeping with the abandon of an infant.

As the match burned low in his fingers Matthew Higgins leaned over and watched Snod Smooty sleep. This was the first time in ten years he had known Snod to sleep with someone watching him.

The night must have been a swell affair! The smell of smoke reached Smooty’s consciousness; he turned over suddenly and opened his eyes completely. His face was still blank with an effort to see in the darkness, and his voice came huskily:

“Matt?”

The answer was in keeping with the dimness. The match had burned out and Matt Higgins was killing it on the floor with his toe.

“Yeah. Wake up! Any news?”

Snod Smooty raised his slim body to a sitting posture and slung his thin feet to the grimy floor. He ran his left hand through his colorless hair and wiped out his eyes with the right palm.

“Cigarette?”

Matt Higgins took _The Morning Call_ from his overcoat pocket and placed it over the hole in one of the stools. Over that he folded his overcoat and raised himself onto the stool.

“Better not. Watchmen or something. How was the night?”

Smooty put the unlit cigarette sullenly in his hip pocket and said sweetly:

“Hell all the time ... and then some.... ’Bout ten a drunk naval officer-beau of the dead nurse brought her a bouquet of red roses, darling. Thought she was doing duty on the ward. Didn’t know about her death. Shook the guts outa that student nurse when she told him and then began playing hide-and-seek under the patients’ beds with me.”

“The devil!”

“Yeah, himself! I got him outa the hospital, socked him, and tucked him into a parked car to sleep it off. Went over him first, though. William Brady, U. S. N. Loot. J. G.

“Then I went back to the ward. And he had left the roses on the bed of one old blattering fool and she took it that she’s next to go and can she scream! So loud the others couldn’t make a squeak. Well, the Jew doctor got there and a mess of nurses and hen medics and give them all a bromide and then they needed bed-pans again ... and then ... they had to have a drink of water. And then another bed-pan around. Like salt and pepper, you know. Now I see why the Waldorf makes money. Pay toilets for ladies.”

“And Lil?” Matt’s voice was demanding.

“Lil’s lost her nerve, Matt. Swears if you don’t get her outa there by this afternoon, she’s going to walk out. Says the examination she had to get in that damn bed was just like being frisked naked. During pan-rounds we had some conversation.

“She’s took it into her head that that student nurse, the niece of the head nurse, is doing the murders. She’s took it that the girl is like that moll she caught in the circus last spring (she says you know which one) working for a hypnotist and selling dope. Damn if Lil ain’t decided that the head nurse of the clinic, Miss Kerr, who got her stout old tail up there before it was all over, ain’t making her niece work for somebody ... ain’t both of them working for some control ... who is having them murder patients.”

“Lord God! That ties up, too.... Go on ... finish your story.”

“It’s Lil’s idea, Matt, that they are doing it because they hate young Sterling and are trying to ruin him, and get him out ... and nothing I could say ... between bed-pans and glasses of water ... could change her mind a nits worth. When Lil is out of reach ... you know what I mean ... she’s hard to reason with.

“And she’s got the creeps bad as the rest of them, now, and told me if I let that little bitch come within fifteen feet of her the rest of the night she’d....

“So after we’d gotten all them females quieted inside and out, I had to spend till seven this A. M. doing things that would keep me where I could see the nurse. Sweeping corridors and asking questions and messing up the guts of the electric refrigerator and, you know ... having the hell of a good time....”

He threw out his hands futilely.

“Women who can walk and talk is bad enough, but when they ain’t got nothing to do, except lay out in bed ... thirty strong ... I ain’t been this tired since I worked in a prison camp in Germany in ’16.

“That student nurse and her aunt suspect me, too. And I had to put up some alibi about having been a hospital orderly in London and when I was always in the place I was told not to be, that was the way ... you know.... Lil says if I ain’t back on the ward by three this afternoon, time the aunt usually makes floor rounds, pretending to be learning the ways from the day orderly, she will be outa there ... and ... you know....”

“Good work, Snod.” Higgins complimented, and then ordered, “Good idea. Be back on by three. Sleep here this morning. After last night, the murderer will either strike quick, or lay off for some time. I’ll wire for another man this morning; but he may not get here until tomorrow.... We’ll have to do double time all around....”

Snod’s voice was flat and caustic.

“Yeah.”

Higgins ignored it and said:

“After you went on, MacArthur and I had another talk, and he took me to see the nurse’s body. Lovely thing. Seems this coniine can be prepared synthetically but the toxicologist laughs off the idea that it was. Too hard to do. And I brought out that however prepared the first thing to do was to stop the ‘shots’. MacArthur agrees, but he won’t commit anybody. You were right. I told him it’s a crazy nurse or doctor and he had apoplexy. He’s straight. I like him. I’m to see the heads of all departments today and see what I can find out, unobserved. And I’ll meet you here again at two-forty, before you go back on the ward.

“If Lil’s right, they are working for the psychiatrist, and if she’s not, then it’s the man MacArthur is shielding. See anybody last night took your eye?”

“No. They were all too shocked. The murderer wasn’t there.” Smooty, who had a habit of talking “in character” was too interested to “think” as an orderly. “The person in authority was the Jew and he’s white. Jew doctors are! Those Kerr women, head nurse and student, took it too calmly.”

“Want any breakfast?” Higgins asked from the door.

“No. Just a bed-pan, please!”

Snod’s voice fluted after him.

With the overcoat, Snod Smooty made himself a pillow, and was asleep before Mr. Higgins had retraced his steps halfway up the corridor.

When Higgins reached the place where the basement steps came up into the corridor of the vacant building, he struck another match, again under the protection of his hat and looked for the tracks he and Dr. MacArthur had made last night. Then he descended the steps and stood in the dark basement corridor. He stood erect, with his shoulders thrown back, listening. When the silence assured his mind and hurt his eardrums he began walking up the basement corridor, toward the entrance into the main service corridor, which ran directly under the main hospital corridor. He and Dr. MacArthur had decided the best way to get out of the lab building would be through the service corridor, the door of which had a spring lock, and then up the service elevator to the main floor of the Administration Building.

The basement corridor was black as night, but totally dead. The worn-out odor of old chemicals mingled with that of damp plaster. The smell began to permeate his nostrils and made each creak of the sagging floor hit his brain like a pistol shot. The soft blackness closed in like a sweating fog.

He began to feel as a swimmer feels against strong tides. The door at the end of the corridor was diminishing as the door in _Alice in Wonderland_, or had it been Alice who diminished? He had just convinced himself that the last sound and the newest smell were caused by a leaking water tap and an escaping gas jet, when something struck his foot, ran up his pants’ leg to his waist, and down the other side.

Rats!

He jumped with the agility of a fencing expert into an open door and threw up his arm automatically. He stood with his muscles flexed, listening and beginning to feel the beads of perspiration starting under his arms and trickling down his thighs.

And then he laughed at himself and tried to lower his arm. It wouldn’t come. He tugged and he could feel his coat sleeve beginning to give. The tap continued its regular drip, drip, and his nerves became strung and he reached his free hand in his pocket and drew out a match and lit it upon the seat of his pants, regardless.

Then he saw the trouble instantly. His arm was caught by a long iron hook suspended from the ceiling. He looked around and saw the room was full of such hooks.

“Wuuh!”

The ejaculation came naturally. He was in the room where they had once hung the cadavers. His coat was caught upon a cadaver hook! And with the realization his reflexes began working automatically. He leaped and freed his arm and struck his head upon the ceiling.

Then he leaned against the wall and shivered. The feel of the burning match against his flesh brought him to, like a pain.

“Fool!” he muttered reprovingly and his perspiring body was seared dry by a consuming shame. “Lighting matches in a basement with escaping gas and getting hysterical over rats. Get out of here!”

He regained the corridor and proceeded quickly in the direction of the door. When his hand was upon the handle he stopped for a moment to consider and get himself together.

Was Snod safe in this building? Had those feelings he had just been through been entirely hysterical or were they partly occasioned by the presence of the murderer, somewhere, in that basement?

He checked over it all step by step and decided that they were pure ... might as well admit it ... pure hysteria. An innate fear of dead people, which he knew perfectly well he had had ever since that boy in Mexico took so long to die when he shot him fifteen years ago. And he had glassed his eyes on him when he finally did go.

Nobody but Snod was in this building. A murderer left tracks just like any other man and he had examined all of the tracks.

You had to take a chance....

He snapped the spring lock and stepped out into the service corridor. The door slammed behind him and he looked both ways.

The corridor was whitewashed and brilliantly lighted with electric lights, like a subway station. In the distance were two orderlies pushing two large laundry bins. They had their backs to him. In the other direction were three maids standing around a woman who was talking hurriedly and gesticulating wildly. They were standing in a knot and did not see him. He started to walk and as he lifted his foot it caught upon something. He looked down.

He had kicked a huge bunch of American Beauty roses from in front of the door. Somehow he side-stepped them and began making his feet rise, fall, and move.

Should he go back? Should he go on? Should he pick them up? The great thing was to keep moving ... the great thing, and by the time he had begun moving he had decided to ignore the flowers ... temporarily ... and try to remember MacArthur’s directions. Past the print shop, past the laundry entrance, and then the first door to the left....

He had accomplished the print shop when he discovered that walking beside him was a small faded woman, and she was carrying the roses. And then he decided to find out.

“Is this the main corridor of the hospital?” He had removed his hat and was giving her the “somebody’s mother” treatment. “Pretty flowers!”

She began to gasp out respectfully:

“No, sir. Take the elevator there, Doctor,” she pointed. “Pretty, ain’t they? Miss Kerr told that maid,” she pointed again toward a retreating figure, “to bring them over to the Nurses’ Home for Miss Standish’s funeral (she was of that simple class which believes everybody knows her acquaintances) and an orderly in the corridor told the maid....”

The elevator door opened and Matt Higgins had learned all he needed to know, immediately.

He gave the woman his “silver threads among the gold” smile and asked the elevator boy:

“Is the main corridor above this?”

“Yes, sir. Lost? It’s easy to get lost around here.”

They reached the main floor and Matt Higgins stepped from the elevator and began walking toward the entrance from the main corridor to the Administration Building.

He was dead tired....

But when he saw Dr. Henry MacArthur, through the open door of his office, he knew that whatever he had just been through he must hide.

The last man he had seen with that look of steely panic was the president of the bank in Wall Street during the first days of the 1929 collapse. That kind of panic was followed by icicles of fear in the brain and after that....

“Good morning, Doctor,” his voice was calm and confident.

With its tone, MacArthur’s courtesy revived, but it was automatic. He rose with an obvious effort and motioned the detective to a chair, closed the door into the corridor, and offered Higgins a cigarette.

“Thanks.”

Neither of them noted the brilliant sun upon the mahogany director’s table, nor the glint it gave the diamond upon the finger of Elijah Wilson in the portrait hanging behind MacArthur’s desk.

MacArthur re-seated himself, rubbed his eyelids listlessly and then, his blue eyes upon Higgins’ gray ones, asked:

“You know about last night?”

Higgins nodded and replied:

“We must do something, Doctor. After that the murderer will either strike immediately, or wait indefinitely. In either case, we need a man on the ward day as well as night. May I call the agency now?”

“Why not use a local man?”

Higgins shook his head decisively.

“Too much depends on the man to take someone I am not sure of. With your permission?”

He reached for the telephone and MacArthur said, “You have it.”

“New York. Digby 4-3872. Mr. Anderson. James P. Anderson. Put it through right away, please.”

He held the receiver and put his hand over the mouthpiece. Dr. MacArthur began pacing the room. He carried himself with a brittle straightness, and Higgins watched him closely while the girls were saying, “Indianapolis? Chicago? Hello Buffalo?” ... and then ... “New York?” and then Anderson’s voice.

“Anderson?” Higgins knew the voice immediately. “Higgins. Can you get Rogers on the Westbound mail plane in twenty minutes? Then the other plane and he’ll have to change at Chicago, or charter a plane from there. Yes, shaping up. No news yet. Good! O.K.”

MacArthur wheeled.

“He will be here this afternoon?”

Higgins pushed the telephone over upon the desk.

“If he makes the plane leaving in twenty minutes. Otherwise about eight tonight. Next to Smooty I’d rather have him than any man on the force.

“Smooty passed himself off as an orderly from a London hospital and will go back on at three to watch things and learn the Elijah Wilson routine from the day orderly. So you can rest easily, as to the vigilance, Doctor.”

His voice, like his person, was strong and commanding.

Dr. MacArthur slackened his pace and Higgins continued:

“Doctor, Miss Parkins thinks that the head nurse and her niece are mediums murdering for some control ... some doctor....”

Dr. MacArthur sat down suddenly and an imperceptible shadow of relief passed over his graven face.

Last night he would have exploded at the mere mention of such an idea, while this morning....

His voice was old and unconvinced.

“I don’t believe it, Higgins. I have known doctors by the thousand. Good. Bad. And indifferent. But I do not believe any doctor....”

“A crazy doctor?”

MacArthur threw up his hands helplessly.

“A crazy somebody, yes. But not a doctor....”

Higgins decided to pass up the point and continued:

“Whoever it is must be caught quickly. I suggest we give up the idea of putting me through as a patient. Last night it appeared feasible but I spent most of the night thinking, and I feel certain, Doctor MacArthur, that after the episode on the ward, we must hasten everything. Put me through the hospital as a member of the administrative staff of some distant hospital. Thereby I get a chance to see the heads of every department, including the Psychiatrist, and the Physician-in-Chief....”

Dr. MacArthur winced. Then that was the man! Higgins continued, placidly, “And decide who I must question, and also permit me ... if necessary ... to get about the hospital suddenly. After last night....”

Dr. MacArthur interrupted him. His panic was welling up.

“I’ll agree to anything ... almost, Mr. Higgins. After last night action is vital. Tomorrow is visiting day throughout the hospital. By tomorrow night relatives of every patient on that ward will know that Rose Standish was murdered! And we cannot avoid their knowing it. If we close the ward to visitors ... we have never in all the years the hospital has been in existence done ... that! Public confidence is our greatest asset. Has been. What shall we do? The newspapers, the police, the reputation of the hospital, d’y’see?”

“Too well, sir.”

But the tension was wearing itself out in speech and Dr. MacArthur went on:

“The hysteria among the nursing and medical staffs was bad enough, God knows, but before today is over, we must face the hysteria manifesting itself among the menial staff. How can a hospital run without orderlies, electricians, cooks? If the menials become hysterical...?”

“They already are, Doctor. When I came out of the basement entrance of the old lab building into the service corridor fifteen minutes ago, my feet caught upon a bunch of red roses.”

“What?”

“I said, sir, my feet caught....”

“I heard you. Where did they come from?”

“They had been dropped, Doctor, by a maid who had been ordered by Miss Kerr, the head nurse in Medicine Clinic, to take them over to the Nurses’ Home for the funeral of Miss Standish. An orderly told the maid where they came from....”

“God!”

The panic re-entered Dr. MacArthur’s eyes and Higgins took advantage of it.

“You are right about time, Doctor. It’s everything. To save time I must have every atom of knowledge which you have. Last night I hoped to work independently, but now....”

He leaned forward and shot his gimlet gray eyes into the horror stricken ones of MacArthur.

“Is the man everybody but you suspects, young Sterling?”

MacArthur’s groan was evidence.

“Well, I thought so. Last night you suggested I question him last on account of his father.”

MacArthur’s fight seemed suddenly to return and he shot back:

“This morning I demand it. His father will be dead by midnight. I appreciate your position, but I must ask you to respect my wishes. Have you given up the idea that Bear Sterling is implicated?”

“No, sir. But we cannot await another murder to clear him.”

“Precisely. Nor anybody else, Mr. Higgins. I see that. But I also see that if Cub Sterling does not leave his father’s side today and is not questioned until after his death, supposing ... the other ... to be correct ... you will have not lost anything. They must all be checked, automatically, since you believe the murderer is a crazy doctor. Check them today, Mr. Higgins. And if....”

He rose and began to pace the floor, and his figure was more than erect. It was almost illuminated.

“You belong, sir, to that type of man which can appreciate trust between strong men. Between Cub Sterling and his father such a trust has always existed. Within twenty hours it will be broken and ... why, Mr. Higgins, if you wish, I shall sit outside the door of the room in which he is fighting for Bear’s life, from now until you release me.... But my position ... d’y’see?”

“I do, and I respect you for it, Doctor. But the two men who have attended all of the dead patients were the Doctors Sterling. Regarding the questioning, I shall do as you desire, provided, sir, that when the superintendent of nurses takes me to Medicine Clinic, you will insist that Dr. Cub Sterling accompany us over the clinic, in precisely the same manner in which the other men are to do. Thereby I can at least judge the man. Otherwise I throw up the case, here and now. My position would be hopeless, if I were to be denied at least a summary ... not made through the eyes of personal esteem and family fame ... of one of the two chief suspects. Perhaps it is brutal to put it so, but the chief suspect in the eyes of the nursing and menial staffs.”

“I know it, Higgins. I’ll do as you wish.”

His voice and his face were parched and sad.

Their eyes locked again and Higgins said: