Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
wasn't anything for it but to help her up. She caught hold of the pipe-molding between the windows, and jerked at it.
"I thought so," she said. "It doesn't give a hair's breadth! Lizzie, no picture ever pulled that molding down like that."
Well, it was curious, when you think about it. It's easy enough to read Mr, Conan Doyle's stories, knowing that no matter how puzzling the different clues seem to be, Mr. Doyle knows exactly what made them, and at the right time he'll let you into his secret, and you'll wonder why you never thought of the right explanation at the time. But it is different to have to work them out yourself, and to save my life I couldn't see anything to that bended pipe but a bended pipe.
Tish's next move was to crawl upon the, bed, and that time I helped her willingly. She stood for quite a while, gazing at the pipe, with her nostrils twitching, steadying herself with one hand against the wall to put on her glasses with the other.
"Humph!" she said. "I can't quite make it 'out There are prints against the wall just underneath, but it doesn't seem to be a hand."
I got up beside her and we both looked. It was a hand, and it wasn't. It seemed like a long hand with short fingers. Tish leaned down and rubbed her hand on the headboard of the bed, which was dusty, as she expected, and then pressed its imprint against the wall beside the other. They were alike, and they were different, and suddenly it came to me, and it made me dizzy.
'I know what it is now, Tish," I said as calmly as I could. "That's the mark of a foot!"
Tish nodded. She'd seen it almost as soon as I had.
"A foot," she repeated gravely, and we climbed off the bed in a hurry and went out into the hall.
Tish had left her cane in her excitement, and she refused to go back for it alone. I went with her, finally, and we stood at the bottom of the bed and looked at the foot, with its toes pointed up toward the ceiling, and Tish's hand beside it.
"You know, Lizzie," she said, clutching my arm, "if there were a fourth dimension, we could walk up walls easily."
And we went down to her room again.
It was careless of us to forget Tish's handprint on the wall, for when things got worse, and they discovered the two marks, somebody suggested that no two hands make exactly the same print, and they had an expert take an impression of it As Tish said, she expected to be discovered every time she had her pulse counted, and the strain was awful. They might have accused her, you know, of carrying off old Johnson and stringing him up, for they reached a state when they suspected everybody.
Chapter V.
When Aggie Screamed
Now Aggie has hay fever, and the slightest excitement, any time in the year, starts her off. So when we heard her sneezing as we went down the stairs, we were not surprised to find Tommy Andrews In front of her with an order book on his knee, and Aggie trying to hold a glass thermometer in her mouth.
'I can't," she was protesting around the thermometer. "Justh try sneething yourself with a—a—choo."
Her teeth came down on it just then with a snap and her face grew agonized.
"There!" she said. "What did I tell you?" And pulled the thermometer out minus an end.
"Where's the rest?" Tommy demanded.
"I—I swallowed it!"
Tommy jumped up. and looked frightened.
"Great heavens, it's glass I" he said. "What in thunder—why, there it is in your lap!"
"I swallowed the inside," Aggie said stiffly. "I should think that's bad enough. It's poison, isn't it?"
Tommy laughed. "It won't hurt you," he said. "It's only quicksilver."
But Aggie was only partly reassured. "I daresay I'll be coated inside like the back of a mirror," she snapped. "Between being frightened to death until I'm in a fever, and then swallowing the contents of a thermometer, and having it expand with the heat of my body, and maybe blow up, I feel as though I'm on the border of the spirit land myself."
In spite of Tommy's reassurances, she refused to be comforted, and sat the rest of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. She ate no luncheon, and she absolutely refused to go home. Aggie is like most soft-mannered people, trying to make her do something she doesn't want is like pounding a pillow. It seems to give way, and the next minute it's back where it was at first, and you can pound till your hands ache. So when she said she was going to stay at the hospital until she felt sure the mercury wasn't going to blow up or poison her, we had to yield.
We got the room next to Tish's and put her to bed, and she lay there alternately sneezing and sleeping the rest of the day. I went out during the afternoon and brought a nightgown for her and one for myself, and the mentholated cotton wool for her nose. The walk did me good, and by the time I got back I was ready to sneer at footprints that go up a wall and Johnson hanging to a chandelier.
As I left the elevator at Tish's door, I met Miss Linda Smith and stopped her. "Is there anything new?" I asked.
"Nothing, except that Miss Blake has been sent back to bed," she said. "She's a nervous little thing anyhow, and she has not been here very long. When she has had almost three years, as I have, she'll learn to let each day take care of itself—not to worry about yesterday or expect anything of to-morrow."
"And how about to-day?" I asked, smiling at the contradiction of her pessimistic speech and her cheerful face.
"And to work like the deuce to-day," she said, and went smiling down the hall.
I had brought in some pink roses, and when I'd put Aggie's nightgown on her and the wool in her nose, I had Miss Lewis take me to Miss Blake's room.
It was close at hand. If you know the Dunkirk Hospital, you know that the nurses' dormitory is directly beside the main building, and connected with it by doors on every floor. One of these doors was at the end of Tish's corridor, and Miss Blake's room was the first on the 'other side.
Miss Lewis knocked and tried the door, but it was bolted.
"Who's there?" asked a startled voice, quite close, as if it's owner had been standing just inside.
"Miss Lewis, dear."
"Just a moment."
She opened the door almost immediately and admitted us. She had on only her night gown and slippers, and her hair was down in a thick braid. I have reached the time of life when I brush most of my hair by holding one end of it in my teeth, so I always notice hair.
"You're up," said Miss Lewis accusingly.
"Only to be sure the door was fastened," she protested, and got into her single bed again obediently.
"Now don't be silly!" Miss Lewis said-"Why should you lock that door in the middle of the afternoon? I thought you were the girl who rescued the kitten from the ridge pole of the roof!"
"That was different," said Miss Blake, and shut her eyes.
"I don't want to disturb you," I said. "Only—my friend and I felt sorry that she caused you such a shock last night. And I want you to have these flowers."
She seemed much pleased and Miss Lewis put them on the table by the bed, beside another bouquet already there, a Huge bunch of violets and lilies of the valley. Violets and lilies of the valley are Tommy's favorite combination!
"Doctor Andrews been here this afternoon?" Miss Lewis asked, looking up from arranging the roses.
"Once—twice," said the little nurse, with heightened color.
"I see," said Miss Lewis. "And the husband of thirty-six telephoning all over the city for him."
"The husband of thirty-six!" I repeated, astounded. They both laughed,