Part 5
“We must make no decisions ... nor allow ourselves any prejudices, until we are in possession of all evidence.”
His voice was stern.
“You were saying, Baldy...?”
“That Dr. Heddis believes it was done ... hypodermically. He suspected coniine and called me twenty minutes ago, and as a result all of the medicine closets in Medicine Clinic have just been checked. Nothing was found.”
“Ever have any obscure poisons in the pharmacy?” Cub Sterling was leaning arrogantly forward.
“Rarely. None, at present.”
“How can you account for the entry of this ... coniine?” Cub Sterling lowered his brows and scowled.
“_I_ can’t, Dr. Sterling,” Rathbone turned his body around and looked through Cub searchingly. His doming forehead added weight to his eyes.
Cub shifted his position, and Bear Sterling who had missed the by-play growled:
“Is it hard to obtain?”
“Sir?”
“I said is coniine difficult to get?”
“Since we never have any use for it, I don’t know, Dr. Sterling,” he hesitated as if endeavoring to hide his irritation and then continued, “Shall I find out, sir?”
Dr. MacArthur interposed:
“Good idea. See where and in what quantities the big pharmaceutical houses have sold coniine within the last year.”
“Perhaps we can trace the person quickly that way,” Dr. Barton affirmed.
Rathbone rose and turned, “Is there anything else, gentlemen? I’ll let you know directly I find out. Do you wish all syringes in the hospital checked, Dr. MacArthur?”
“Do you, gentlemen?” Dr. MacArthur turned toward Harrison and Bear Sterling.
“Plenty of time for that,” Hoffbein inserted. “Check the supply sources first.”
When Rathbone was gone they felt as though a strong support had been removed. His incisive uprightness rested them; but he had shot them so full of information they were still dazed when Miss Roenna Kerr entered.
She came, her hair waved, her face firmly set, the bust and rear defiantly inflated, her enraged vitals midway between. She had been there as long as any of them. Her work had always been perfect. She wore her new pair of bunion-rest shoes.
Princeton Peters took her arm in his, patted her hand and murmured:
“Dear Miss Kerr, brace up!”
He eased her into the “witness chair” and tiptoed back to his own.
He was worth a million dollars to the Elijah Wilson ... in his way. To every other man in the room she had appeared _too_ braced!
In response to their “good morning,” she smiled, generally, cocked her head on one side and said to MacArthur:
“You sent for me, Doctor?”
“Yes, Miss Kerr,” his slow methodical fairness was beating against his natural inclinations. “We want you to tell us exactly what you know about the death of the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic, please.”
“The last one?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Well, before I begin I should like to say that the Elijah Wilson is as dear to my heart as to any of yours, and my humiliation is....”
Again Princeton came to the rescue.
“We know it!”
She flopped her bosom, took a snort of air and continued.
“The patient in Bed 11, Ward B, was admitted Sunday as a patient of Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Senior, under the observation of Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior....”
“Yes, Miss Kerr. But the thing I wish you to report upon is the nursing-staff angle....”
She flopped her bosom again and said:
“Miss Kexter, my white nurse on Ward B is one of the finest women I have ever met in the nursing profession. And she had been most surpassingly brave through this entire ... investigation.... I think it has come to that, now....”
“Trained with us?” Dr. Harrison asked.
“Yes. Stood second in her class. She has under her five student nurses into whose records I have gone most thoroughly ... and who have been cruelly grilled....”
“Miss Kerr,” Dr. MacArthur interrupted, “we have all been cruelly grilled as you call it. Please try to realize that it is not because we suspect your department ... any more than any other ... that we are questioning you.”
“Dr. MacArthur,” she bit her lips, “my department has been my life; when it is criticized....”
“We know you do! And so does everybody else concerned,” Dr. Harrison interposed. “Really Miss Kerr, please stick to what has happened. Your niece has night duty on Ward B, I believe?”
“She has.”
“She says you gave her orders about what to say to the patients about the death. Did you?” Cub Sterling had forgotten his manners and become bitterly stern.
“I wasn’t on duty, Dr. Ethridge.”
“Did you talk to her over the telephone?”
“Of course not. How should I know of the death?”
“Did you talk to her on the ward?”
She inflated entirely and said with a defiant calm:
“Doctor Ethridge, I just answered that question.”
“Then how do you explain her statement, Miss Kerr?”
A sudden terror flicked her china blue eyes. She dropped the lids instantly and replied with studied slowness:
“The child has been through such an ordeal, she was rattled.”
“Thank you.”
Bear Sterling shifted, Dr. Harrison stroked his beard, Dr. MacArthur frowned and took up the questioning before Cub Sterling had regained his composure.
“Who has charge of the hypodermic syringes on your floors, Miss Kerr?”
“The white nurse in charge.”
“Who has access to them?”
“She and the student nurses on duty.”
“At all hours?” Bear Sterling rumbled.
“At _all_ hours, Dr. Sterling. _Night_ as well as day,” she defied.
“I see.”
His two words nicked her composure. She questioned shortly:
“Why aren’t you questioning my night supervisor?”
“She was not available when your niece discovered the murder, and therefore her testimony would have no value.”
“Where was she?” Dr. Harrison drawled.
Miss Kerr began to turn purple.
“In the lavatory, Doctor.”
“What time did you get into the Clinic this morning, Miss Kerr?”
She turned her defiant eyes upon Cub Sterling and struck:
“At four sharp. The night superintendent had called me at three-thirty and told me. I came over immediately. You were still with Dr. MacArthur, I believe.”
Again his “Thank you” cut her down.
Dr. MacArthur realized she was useless, so he said:
“Thank you, Miss Kerr. You have been a great help. Of course I do not have to ask a person of your integrity to realize the necessity of silence.”
Princeton took his cue and opened the door.
Miss Kerr rose majestically and smiled inclusively.
She left every man in the room irritated.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. MacArthur soothed, “that is all of the testimony, except Mattus’ story, and Dr. Sterling, Ethridge and I went over it with him while we were awaiting the autopsy findings. Any questions or decisions before Heddis comes?”
“What was Mattus’ statement?” Dr. Harrison asked.
“That he found the patient in the condition Father and I did when he made his rounds, and the next time he saw her, at three-five, she was dead,” Cub Sterling responded.
“Could the murderer have any animus against the patients?” Barton asked leaning forward.
“Not likely,” Cub said. “One from out of town and genteel poor, second dispensary admission, and the last old patient. Been in the hospital before.”
He was interrupted by a knock upon the door and Dr. Heddis’ stout, round body, with its piano-post legs and lion head protruded through the opening. His wide-set yellow-brown eyes, even in repose, dominated his highly intelligent face. Dr. MacArthur motioned him into the “witness chair” and he began speaking in a high, tired voice which, because of his increasing deafness, had a sing-song quality.
In ordinary conversation his impediment required a “raising” of his questioner’s voice, so upon a subject of which men spoke in whispers any information he had to give automatically became a soliloquy:
“’Morning, gentlemen. Luck, pure luck! Organs appeared perfectly normal. Began the obscure tests alphabetically. It would have taken two days to reach coniine, if my nose hadn’t been haunted by an almost imperceptible odor; after about a half hour my brain finally diagnosed it.
“The tests are conclusive. She died of an infusion of coniine, C8H17N, _per os_ or hypodermically. Puncture makes syringe theory conclusive as coniine administered _per os_ would be remarked by the patient. Smells like mouse urine. Also acts locally as a caustic. Burning the mouth. Itching of the throat. Dizziness. Nausea. Tormenting thirst. Paralysis of the sural muscles.... The patient had none of these symptoms?”
He turned toward Cub Sterling questioningly. So did every other man in the room. Cub’s “No” was verbal as well as muscular.
“You see,” the leonine head rolled heavily, “one and one-half to two grains administered hypodermically would be fatal ... in a very short time ... before a patient would have the agony symptoms penetrate to the drug deadened nerve centers. Before she could rouse herself the paralysis of the peripheral endings of the motor nerves had set in; also the deadening of the sensory nerves had begun. The dominant action, however, is upon the motor system. Death ensued from paralysis of respiration.”
He stopped to draw breath and no man interrupted. Toxicology was only a branch of the science upon which this man was an authority.
Dr. Heddis continued: “All organs appeared normal. The stomach content, the organs rich in blood ... liver, spleen, kidneys, lungs ... appeared healthy. But they ... all ... responded positively to the solubility, crystallization and Melzer’s tests.”
Prissy could stand the tension no longer. He screamed, “Of what plant is coniine the active principal?”
“Hemlock!”
“The fatal hemlock!” Dr. Harrison’s voice was heavy as he quoted:
“‘Then Socrates lay down upon his back and the person who had administered the poison went up to him and examined for a little time his feet and legs and then squeezing his foot strongly, asked whether he felt him.’”
Dr. Heddis, who never had any trouble understanding Harrison, also knew his Plato. He nodded and continued:
“‘Socrates replied that he did not. He then did the same to his legs, and proceeding upwards in this way, showed us that he was cold and stiff, and he afterwards approached him and said to us that when the effect of the poison reached the heart Socrates would depart....’”
Heddis threw out his hands helplessly.
Princeton, who was weak upon the classics, spoke.
“Sinister!” he breathed heavily.
“Used to be used for whooping cough,” Cub Sterling clipped gruffly.
The information, for the shadow of a second before Dr. Heddis began speaking again, made the pupils of Hoffbein’s eyes dilate slightly. Bear Sterling’s eyes were pin points needling themselves past the grave figure of MacArthur and into the long face of Heddis, who continued:
“Can be prepared synthetically by means of the same cadaveric alkaloid, or ptomaine, that is formed in putrefaction of cadavers, that is, cadaverine or penta-methylene-diamine.”
Hoffbein began to squirm slightly.
“The injection, C8H17N (_Conium maculatum_), presumably combined with lactic acid is colorless and gradually turns yellow and brown in the air.”
Dr. Barton rose and leaned close to Dr. Heddis’ ear.
“In your opinion would the person who gave this ... drug ... require a knowledge of chemistry?”
Dr. Heddis pressed his plump thumb into his cheek.
“I can’t say, definitely. But ... all that a man needs to know of dynamite to destroy a city is that it will explode. Rathbone is checking supply sources, I understand. I’m not hopeful....”
He shrugged his thick shoulders.
“A medical student with a flare for toxicology could have made it synthetically. Anybody with a medical background could....”
“Then I suggest,” Dr. Harrison’s voice was patiently fighting the rising tension, “that we separate and think it over privately until after lunch. Men under a strain as long as this has been upon Ethridge and Dr. MacArthur are not at their mental best ... you both need rest; you have borne up magnificently.... Let’s re-convene here at two, gentlemen?”
Dr. Heddis turned from the door:
“If you need me, MacArthur....”
Dr. Hoffbein blocked his exit. “One question before we go. Is there much hysteria on the ward?”
“Nothing visible,” Cub Sterling snapped. “There is tension of course.”
A terrible desire to get away from it all for just fifteen minutes ... to forget! ... to run away and rest ... made Cub Sterling walk through the ground floor of his clinic and start down the accident room steps toward Otto’s.
Halfway down he hesitated.
Three minutes later he walked through Ward B, ascertained from a student nurse that Dr. James was at lunch and Dr. Mattus still with the students. Then he opened the door of Room Two.
Rested, relaxed eyes, whose black shadows had disappeared, whose violet shades sung against the white pillows, turned peacefully toward his measuring brown ones.
The girl took a cigarette from between her lips and began:
“I slept like a lamb. My leg doesn’t hurt. I told the interne a nurse brought me the cigarettes and they quieted my nerves, so your shirt-tail is clear. She let me keep them.... I’ve been thinking a lot. Look here! Today is Tuesday! There is absolutely no sense keeping me here, forever....”
Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior, closed the door sharply and strode over to the bed. His features were flattening. His dark curly hair was dishevelled. His voice had its “’Night!” quality.
“You are my patient and you are not to get out of that bed until I say so. I know today is Tuesday just as well as you do. Possibly better! What you seem never to realize is that I am a tremendously busy man. A Physician-in-Chief works! You are not the only patient in this hospital ... but God knows you are the most petulant! Spending all your days lying there thinking up problems to hound me with! Tying yourself in knots of complications, instead of realizing you are a damned lot luckier than you deserve!”
Her mouth had been contracting slowly. When Cub stopped for breath she opened it quickly and began:
“You may be right about the luck, Doctor Sterling. But one thing medicine has failed completely to teach you is that people without money still have pride! Do you think I’ve enjoyed lying here for ninety-six hours having you throw up to me that the Attorney-General will pay my bills? Do you? There is a rumor that the Attorney-General is going to be in the next Cabinet. I was riding with him to try and find out. If I had found out, I’d have had a scoop big enough to pay all the damned-old bills you care to sling at me....
“Well ... I didn’t find out! But that doesn’t keep me from ‘growing the bills.’ I’ve got to hold my job to meet them and I’ve got to get out to do it! And all the medical hysterics you could ever throw doesn’t change the facts. I....”
Her voice broke unexpectedly and she covered her head with a pillow.
Under the sheet Cub could see her body beginning to stiffen.
He reached over gently and took the cigarette from her fingers. Then he looked around for an ash-tray, saw none, and vacantly placed the cigarette between his own lips. The harassment of the morning had drained from his face. A deep concern replaced it.
His voice was bantering and slow:
“Looks like the phlebitis is traveling to your mind, little Salscie. Let’s take it step by step. The job; it’s intact. The doctor who asked me to take you in has been talking to the City Editor about you every day. Mistake was I ordered no visitors and no flowers and so you thought they had abandoned you. You may stay a month so far as they are concerned. The job will be there when you get back. If you stay a month, probably by then our friction may have worn itself out and you’ll begin to see how nice I really am. Want to try?”
The pillow remained inert, but the feet and legs began to relax. Cub cut his eye over the body and began talking again. He decided silently that when the breasts stopped rising, he’d quit talking....
He took the cigarette from his lips and moistened them:
“About the bills, I’ve been a rotter. I should have told you that the paper was paying them, or the hospital, or ... but I was pushed into the situation uninformed. I didn’t know whether you were the king’s mistress or the governor’s. I didn’t care a damn! And then some terribly, horribly important situations arose in the hospital and instead of thinking the thing out, I bungled it.”
The heaving in the breasts became slower, and Cub said:
“About the bills, I’ll do whatever you want me to. The hospital will take your note, or I’ll lend you the money myself. There is only one thing I will not do. I _will not_ let you walk out of this hospital until I am absolutely sure that you are perfectly well. So make up your mind to that! I’m sorry if I’ve been cruel.... I didn’t mean to! Probably I’m just too stupid to be kind, Salscie!”
The heaves died completely. He sat absolutely silent.
With her left hand she caught the edge of the pillow case and pulled the pillow beside her upon the bed. Her eyes looked straight and completely into his. Her voice was contrite and admiring:
“You are the first man who ever offered to lend me money and didn’t paw me at the same time!”
Cub laughed heartily, and then snapped:
“Maybe that’s because I’m stupid!”
Her dimples danced and then she sobered.
“When I’m well, will you come to see me...?”
Cub held her eyes to his and nodded emphatically.
“Whenever you say I may! As often as you’ll let me!”
She began lowering her lids and filled the silence with words:
“Really?”
Cub sat very still and curiosity made her raise her eyes to his again. When they were safely locked, he said, slowly:
“R-e-a-l-l-y!”
The little flecks of sunlight in the room began cascading around her hair, an inside blush centered in her neck.
Cub sat perfectly still and watched her. She knew he was watching her and she also knew that something which made her sick with joy was squirming inside of her. She began speaking desperately and with frightful haste:
“We might have to hang your legs out of a window when you come to dinner. When I get a card table up, there’s not much extra space, you know ... but ... oh, by the way ... could you steal a knife and fork from the doctors’ dining room, do you think? Not steal, but....”
Cub laughed joyously.
Her face was sober.
He said, “Cigarettes, a knife and fork, ... anything else, Salscie?”
“Yes, Cub. What’s the trouble you spoke about in the hospital?”
The banter slipped from his features and his left shoulder began to rise.
“Nothing for you to worry about. Just ... some ... friction.”
She took her right hand from under the covers and reached over and caught his.
“Is it me?”
His eyes met hers and he increased his pressure on the hand.
“No! You can’t cause everything, Salscie!”
Then he rose abruptly.
“I’d better get back, though. Also I’ll make a survey of the knife and fork situation. That pack of cigarettes will be gone by tonight, won’t it?”
She lay back among the pillows and nodded slowly.
Cub beat his way through the singing air and closed the door securely behind him.
»IV« The First Doll
Bear Sterling hurried back to take a look at his brain tumor. He had stopped for a few words with Cub, but Cub had insisted that he must get back to his clinic and relieve Mattus. So after finishing with the brain tumor, which was coming along nicely, Bear went to his own office, shut the door, lay down upon a couch and went to sleep.
There was a crisis ahead. He needed a nap.
Dr. Barton did his rounds, discussed three unusual children with his resident, did as much work and appeared as natural as possible for an hour, and then filled his pipe and began the process of elimination on the evidence.
Dr. Harrison had a fifteen minute survey with his resident; afterward locked himself up in his laboratory and settled down to a “thinking through.”
Hoffbein returned to his clinic and tried to behave as though nothing had happened. His consultant and resident nearly died of excitement.
Dr. MacArthur cleared his desk and endeavored to clear his mind. He had just rung for his secretary and prepared to go upstairs and lie down in a vacant interne room and get some rest, when Prissy Paton and Princeton Peters slipped in and closed the door behind them.
“Can you give us a minute, MacArthur?” Peters’ voice was sepulchral.
Prissy stood in the background and looked as if he were going to cry.
“Certainly. What’s on your minds? Sit down.”
They sat upon the edges of the chairs.
“Well?”
“Go on, Peters, and tell him,” Prissy prompted in his treble.
Princeton’s eyes took on their purple mist and he began:
“Dear MacArthur, what we are about to tell you is drawn out of us by our great love for the Elijah Wilson ... and for you. We feel you must know, and we could not tell you in front of Bear. It would have killed him.”
“What is it? Get to the point.”
“Last night at midnight, Dr. Paton and I were coming up the corridor from Woman’s Clinic ... I had been to see about the eyes of the president of the Woman’s College ... sudden attack ... and Ethridge came out of the door of Medicine Clinic just ahead of us.”
Dr. MacArthur put his hands under his desk and gripped his knees. His voice, however, was perfectly calm, as he replied.
“You must have been mistaken, Dr. Peters. Ethridge said he was in his rooms.”
“That is the saddest part. We heard him say it! And we could not both be mistaken about Ethridge’s back. His queer walk, MacArthur. One shoulder higher than the other.... And we both saw it.”
“But you say yourself that neither of you saw his face, Dr. Peters.”
“You are quite right,” Prissy purred, “we did not see his face ... but I would swear upon my mother’s Bible that it was he.”
“I’ll ask him,” MacArthur’s voice was decisive.
“Please, MacArthur, don’t act hastily! It would be futile to ask _him_, and if it were not for the horrible slur upon the hospital....”
Princeton’s pleading was so intense that he did not note Dr. MacArthur’s silent anger, but Prissy sensed it.
“You must get some rest, MacArthur,” he soothed. “Come on Peters,” and at the door he finished. “Great decisions must be made and we shall not meet them unprepared.”
Miss Evelina Kerr, student nurse, lay prone upon her bed, sobbing bitterly, silently, rackingly. Outside her door a supervisor from Medicine Clinic, off duty at the time, sat erect in a straight back chair, reading one of Edgar Wallace’s novels.
Up and down the hall of the Nurses’ Home voices rose and fell. The nurses on night shift were awakening. Miss Roenna Kerr, head nurse in Medicine Clinic, sailed down the polished floor and as her reflection preceded her, a loud whisper sung.
“Foots!”
The voices ceased, and the doors filled with blond, black, straw-colored, yellow and red heads in all degrees of disarray. Thirty pairs of eyes saw her switch her stern to a halt in front of the supervisor and smile.
“Mattie! How sweet of you to stay by my child!”
Mattie said deferentially:
“Miss Kerr, anything ... anything that I could do!”
Miss Kerr knew Mattie was playing policeman on orders from the Superintendent of Nurses, but she also knew that Mattie was accustomed to taking her own orders. Her lips drew to a beautiful firming and she said huskily:
“Having you in training and upon my staff, Mattie, has been one of the really great joys of a very trying life!”
Mattie began disintegrating, and Miss Kerr put her hand upon the knob of her niece’s door and was inside before the supervisor could moisten her lips.
The room was inky, the dark blue window shade was pulled even with the sill. Miss Kerr whispered, involuntary, “Evelina!”
Two sobs inverted their explosion. The girl sat up beating the air. Miss Kerr ignored her agony and began relentlessly:
“This is no time for hysterics. Come on and tell me! What did you tell them...?”
“Who, Auntie?”
“The General Staff.” Each letter of each word came bitingly.
“Nothing, Aunt Eeenie!”
Miss Kerr threw out her chin, and enunciated carefully: