Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
looked for a moment almost gay.
"He is not a Mormon," she said. "It's a case of 'container for the thing contained.' Thirty-six is a room."
I think the laugh did the little nurse good, but when we left, a few minutes later. Miss Lewis halted me a few steps from the door. We heard her cross the room quickly and the bolt of the door slip into place.
"Queer, isn't it?" asked Miss Lewis. And I thought it was.
Tommy Andrews came back late that night to see Aggie, but she had stopped sneezing and dropped into a doze. He beckoned me out into the hall.
"How is she?" he asked. "Having been quick-silvered inside, I daresay she's been reflecting! Never mind. Miss Lizzie—I couldn't help that."
"Tish wants to see you. Tommy," I said. "She—we found something this afternoon and I don't mind saying we are puzzled."
"More mystery?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "Don't tell me somebody else has shed his fleshy garment and hung it up— "
"Please don't," I said, looking over my shoulder nervously. The hall was almost dark.
"Look here," Tommy suggested in a whisper, "I'll make a bargain with you. I'll go in and listen to Aunt Tish without levity—I give you my word, no frivolity—if you'll come over and play propriety while I see Miss Blake."
Seeing me eye him, he went on guiltily: "She's—sick, you know, and I've been there two or three times to-day already. If it gets out among the nurses— please, dear, good Aunt Lizzie!"
Now, I'm not his aunt. For that matter, I'm a good ten years younger than Tish, but he's a handsome young rascal, and when a woman gets too old to be influenced by good looks, it's because she's gone blind with age, so I agreed on one condition.
"Yes, if you'll see Tish first," I said, and he agreed.
That was how we happened to be in Tish's room when Aggie screamed. Tish had just got to the footprint-on-the-wall part of her story, and even Tommy was looking rather queer, when Aggie sneezed. Then almost immediately she shrieked and the three of us were on our feet and starting for the door before she stopped. As we reached the hall, a nurse was running toward us, and the stillness in Aggie's room was horrible.
It was dark. Which was strange, for Fd left the night light on at Aggie's request. Tommy pushed into the room first.
"Where's the light switch?" he demanded. "Are you there. Miss Aggie?"
There was no answer, but in the darkness every one heard a peculiar rustling sound, such as might be made by rubbing a hand over a piece of stiff silk. It was the nurse who found the switch almost instantly, and I think we expected nothing less than Aggie hanging by her neck to the chandelier. But she was lying quietly in bed, in a dead faint.
When she came to, she muttered something about a dead foot and fainted again. By-eleven o'clock she seemed pretty much herself once more and even smiled sheepishly when Tommy suggested that it had been the fault of the thermometer. She thought herself that she had dreamed it, and Tish and I let her think so. But both of us had seen the same thing.
Just over the head of Aggie's bed the pipe molding was wrenched loose and pulled down out of line!
Chapter VI.
Candle and Skylight
Tish sent Miss Lewis in to sit with Aggie, and the three of us, including Tommy, met in Tish's room. She had brought her alcohol tea-kettle with her, and she insisted on making a cup of tea all around before we talked things over.
"Besides," she remarked, measuring out the tea, "it's about a quarter of twelve now, and we may need a little tea-courage by midnight."
"If that's the way you feel," Tommy said, from the bed, holding his empty cup ready for the tea. "I can get something from the medicine cupboard outside that has tea knocked out in the first round."
"Not whiskey. Tommy!" Tish said with the tea pot in the air.
"Certainly not! Spiritus frumenti," Tommy said with dignity, and Tish was reassured. But I knew what he meant, my great uncle having conducted a country pharmacy and done a large business among the farmers in that very remedy.
When we'd had our tea and some salted wafers, Tish drew up a chair and faced Tommy and myself.
"Now," she said, "what did Aggie see?"
"Personally," Tommy remarked, balancing his teaspoon across the bridge of his nose, and holding his head far back to do it, "personally, I'm glad she only saw—or felt—a foot. It proves her really remarkable quality of mind. The ordinary woman, in a stew like that, would have seen an entire corpse, not to mention smelling sulphur." r
Tish took the spoon off his nose and gave him a smart slap on the ear.
"Thomas!" she said, "you will either be serious or go home. Do you remember what we told you about the room upstairs, a foot-mark on the wall not three feet from the ceiling?"
Tommy nodded, with both hands covering his ears.
"Do you realize," Tish went on, "that that room is directly over the one Aggie is occupying?''
"Hadn't thought of it," said Tommy. "Is it?"
"Yes. Tommy Andrews, Aggie may or may not have dreamed of that ice-cold foot, but one thing she did not dream; Lizzie and I both saw it. The pipe molding over Aggie's bed is pulled loose from the wall and bent down."
Tommy stared at us both. Then he whistled.
"No!" he said, and fell into a deep study, with his hands in his heavy thatch of hair. After a minute he got off the bed and sauntered toward the door.
"I'll just wander in and have a look at it," he said, and disappeared.
It was Tish's suggestion that we put the light: out and sit in the dark. Probably Tommy's nearness gave us courage. As Tish said, in five minutes it would be midnight, and almost anything might happen under the circumstances.
"And as honest investigators," she said, "we owe it to the world and to science to put ourselves en rapport. These things never happen in the light."
We could hear Tommy speaking in a low tone to Miss Lewis, but soon that stopped, although he did not come back. Even with the door open, a dimly-outlined rectangle, I wasn't any too comfortable. Tish sat without moving. Once she leaned over and touched my elbow.
"I've got a tingle in both legs to the knee," she whispered. "Do you feel anything?"
"Nothing but the slat across the back of this chair," I replied, and we sat silent again. I must have dozed almost immediately, for when I roused, the traveling clock was striking midnight, and Tish was shaking my arm.
"What's that light?" she quavered.
I looked toward the hall, and sure enough the outline of the door was a pale and quavering yellow.
The door frame is moving!" gasped Tish. "Fiddle!" I snapped, wide awake. "Somebody's out there with a moving light. Where's-Tommy?"
"He hasn't come back. Lizzie, go and look out. I can't find my cane."
"Go yourself!" I said sourly.
Well, we went together, finally, tiptoeing to the door and peering out. The light was gone; only a faint gleam remained, and that came down the staircase to the upper floor.
"Damnation!" said Tommy's voice, just at our elbow. And with that he darted along the hall and up the stairs, after the light.
Now Tish is essentially a woman of action. She's only timid when she can't do anything.'
And now she hobbled across to the foot of the stairs, with me at her heels.
"That was no earthly light, Lizzie!" she said in a subdued tone. "Do you remember what