Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
search. I stepped into that room in my nightgown and I daresay the man in there nearly died himself—of the shock.'
"The man in Iheref she said. Why, all these rooms are empty, Miss Carberry!"
We stood staring at each other.
" 'There's a man in there,' I repeated. 'He stood up and stared at me when I went in.'
"She got very white, but she walked right over to the door and pushed it open. I saw her throw up her hands, and the next minute she had fallen flat on her face in the doorway, and the night watchman was running toward us with a lighted candle."
Tish leaned over and took a drink of water.
"This bed's full of crumbs. Miss Lewis," she grumbled. "It's queer to me that the only part of this hospital toast that is crisp is the part I get in the bed!"
Tor heaven's sake, Tish," I said impatiently, "I suppose she didn't faint because there were crumbs in your bed!"
"No," Tish said, hitching herself over to the other side of the mattress. "She fainted because the body of the missing spiritualist was hanging by its neck to the chandelier, fastened up with a roller towel."
"Dead?" Aggie asked, opening her eyes for the first time.
"Still dead," Tish replied grimly.
Chapter II.
The Little Nurse
Aggie was really frightfully upset. Aggie is rather emotional at any time, and although she herself is a Methodist, her mother's only sister had been a believer in Spiritualism. (They dug her up ten years after she died, to make room for somebody else, and Aggie's mother said her hair had grown to be fully ten feet long, and was curly, whereas in life it had always been straight. We may sneer at Spiritualism all we want, but things like that are hard to account for.)
Well, of course, Aggie declared that no human hand had strung poor old Johnson to the chandelier by a roller towel around his neck, and although Tish ridiculed the idea, she had to admit that the fourth dimension had never been accounted for, and that table levitation was an accepted fact, and even known to the ancient.
We sat there gloomily enough while Miss Lewis fixed Tish's hair and massaged her knee. In the middle of the massage Tommy Andrews came in, whistling.
"Morning, Aunt Tish," he said. "Morning, Miss Aggie, morning. Miss Lizzie. How's the knee? Looks as handsome as ever."
"She's been walking on it," said Miss Lewis sourly, and giving the knee an extra jab.
Tommy gave Tish a ferocious frown over his glasses.
"Humph!" he said. "I told you to keep off it! Miss Lewis, if she is obstreperous again, just tie her down with a half-dozen roller towels."
"Roller towels!" Tish ejaculated. "Why, it was a roller towel that—that—"
"So you said," Aggie said somberly, and we stared at each other, we hardly knew why.
Tish told Tommy the whole story as he strapped her knee with adhesive plaster. He hadn't heard it, and he was as much puzzled as we were. It was Aggie who remarked afterward how his face changed when Tish mentioned Miss Blake.
"Blake!" he said, glancing up quickly, "not the little nurse with the dark hair?"
"Yes," Tish said.
"Damn!" said Tonuny. "To have left her alone, like that!" And to Miss Lewis: "Is she ill to-day?''
"She's in bed, but she's not sleeping," said Miss Lewis, with more feeling than I'd have expected. "I was going to ask you if you would see her. Doctor. Since the shake-up yesterday, we have no medical internes, and the surgical side is full up."
"She—she didn't ask for me!" said Tommy, with his brown eyes kindling. But Miss Lewis shook her head.
"She's hardly spoken at all. She just lies there with her eyes wide open and her face white, watching the door. An hour ago one of the nurses pushed it open quietly, for fear she was asleep. Miss Blake lay and watched it moving, and when Linda—Miss Smith went in, she fainted again."
Tommy took a turn up and down the room. "She's had a profound shock," he said. "I'm not afraid of it, unless—" He stopped at the window and stood looking out.
"Unless what?" said Tish, but he didn't answer. Instead, he stalked over and rang the bell.
I'll have the hall nurse relieve you. Miss Lewis," he said. "We can't leave my aunt alone, and somebody must see to Miss Blake. There's some natural explanation for what happened last night, and we must find it and tell her."
Aggie began to tell about the aunt with the hair, but before she had even buried her, the door opened and Miss Blake herself came in.
"Did you ring?" she asked. She was dead white, lips and all, with deep circles around her eyes, but her step was brisk and her voice cheerful. As Tish said, if you could only have heard her and not seen her, nobody would have believed what had happened.
Tommy gave her one look, and hauled a chair forward.
"Sit down," he ordered. "You are not fit to be on duty."
"Thank you, but—I am all right again," she said, hesitating.
"Please sit down," said Tommy, with a note in his voice which I never heard him use to Tish. And she took the chair, glancing around at all three of us and then at him.
"Miss Blake," he said, "I have decided to become your medical adviser!"
"Thanks very much!" she said, with the ghost of a smile.
"On one condition," he went off, polishing his glasses very hard with his handkerchief. 'Tfou will have to obey orders."
"That's the first lesson in the training school," she assented, the smile deepening. "Always obey the doctor's orders."
"Stuff!" said Tommy sternly. "If I order you to bed this minute, you'll not go! The trouble is. Aunt Tish and Honorary Aunts Lizzie and Aggie," he said, addressing us each in turn, "the trouble is that in a hospital medicine is a drug on the market. It's too accessible. So are doctors. They're always on tap, like city water, plentiful and free and therefore subject, like the said water, to the scorn and contumely of the beneficiaries."
"Indeed, Doctor," Miss Blake began, but he interrupted her.
"Now, Miss Blake," he said, "at your earnest solicitation I am about to undertake your case, and the first condition is—"
"Obedience?" She shot a glance at him from under her long, dark lashes, and Aggie raised her eyebrows across the bed at me.
"Exactly," he said. "The three aunts, actual and honorary, are witnesses. You have promised obedience. The first condition is— you are to leave the hospital immediately and go to a place I know just out of town, a nice place, with a dog and kittens—no. Aunt Tish, not a cat and kittens, a—"
But Miss Blake stood up suddenly, she was paler than before.
"Not that," she said almost wildly.
Tommy came over and put his hand on her shoulder. "We can dispose of the animals," he said gently. "Can't you see yourself, little girl, that you are about at the end of your string? Quiet nights, sleep, fresh milk—you won't know yourself in a week."
"I can not go," she said, and stood looking straight ahead with such misery in her face that Aggie's eyes filled up.
"You can take your vacation," Tommy persisted, gently, "I'll take you out myself in my machine."
"I don't want to go. Doctor; I—I can't be spared just now. Don't send me away! Don't!"
She began to cry, wildly, hysterically, with her shoulders quivering and her whole body tense. I was considerably upset, and Tommy looked dumbfounded.