Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
said, about the light when Mr. Wiggins died?"
I'd been thinking about it myself that very moment.
"I'd feel better with some sort of weapon, Tish," I protested, as we started up, but Tish only looked at me in the darkness and shook her head. I knew perfectly well what she meant: that no earthly weapon would be of any avail. Considering what we thought, I think that we got up the staircase at all is very creditable.
The light was there, coming from one of the empty rooms, and streaming out into the dark hall. There was somebody moving in the room. We heard a window closing, and then the footsteps coming toward the door. The next moment the light itself came into the hall. It was a candle, and Miss Blake was carrying it!
I made out Tommy's figure flattened in a doorway, and then the light disappeared again as Miss Blake went into the next room, the one where Johnson had been found. She was there a long time, and once we heard her exclaim something and the light from the doorway wavered, as if the candle had almost gone out.
She went into each private room, then into the ward, and finally there remained only the mortuary. Tish clutched my arm. Would this bit of a girl, in her long white wrapper, her childish braid, her small bare feet thrust into bedroom slippers, would she dare that grisly place?"
She did not keep us in doubt long. She went directly to the foot of the mortuary steps and stood, her candle held high, looking up. Then she began to mount them, slowly, as if every atom of her will were required to urge her frightened muscles. Tommy stirred uneasily in his doorway.
The large double doors to the mortuary stood partly open. She pushed them back quietly and hesitated, candle still high. Then she went in, and by the paling light we knew she had gone to the far end of the room. Tommy came out from the doorway and tiptoed down the hall. We could see his outline against the gleam.
The stillness was terrible. We could hear her moving around that awful place, could hear, even at that distance, the soft swish of her negligee on the floor. And then, without any warning, she spoke. It was uncanny beyond description, although we heard nothing she said.
"My God!" said Tish, forgetting herself.
There was a sound immediately after. Tish said it was a thud, as if a chair had been upset, but I insisted that it sounded more like a window thrown up with terrific force. The light went out immediately, and we heard footsteps running away from us.
"Tommy!" Tish called. But nobody answered. We were left there alone in the darkness, shivering with fright.
I am very shaky about what happened next. I remember Tish fumbling for her cane, and saying she was going to follow Tommy, and my holding her back and telling her not to be a fool—that the boy was safe enough. And I remember seeing a light behind us and the old night watchman coming up the staircase with his electric flash, and trying to tell him something was wrong in the mortuary.
And then, as my voice gave way, we heard a shout overhead, and immediately the crash of broken glass and a thud into the hall just ahead of us. The watchman pushed us aside and ran.
Tommy was lying unconscious on the floor with the pieces of a broken skylight all around him.
Chapter VII.
Insinuations and Recriminations
Miss Lewis had heard the crash and came running, with the hall nurse from the floor below. Tish was sitting on the floor among the pieces of glass, with Tommy's head on her knee, crying over him, when they got there. He opened his eyes just then, and lay staring up at the hole in the skylight above, as if he was puzzled. Then he turned his head and saw who was holding him, and made an effort to sit up.
"You—needn't look so tragic, Aunt Tish," he said. "I'm—I'm all right,'' and fell back on her lap again.
Miss Lewis got down and began to feel him for broken bones.
"Skull's whole, thank goodness!" she muttered. "Can you move your legs. Doctor?"
Tommy lifted them in turn, making grimaces of pain. Then he lifted his right arm. It fell as if he couldn't support its weight
"I've bruised my shoulder," he said, and lay back with his eyes closed.
"Get his coat off," ordered Miss Lewis, and I knelt to help her. But Tommy resisted.
"I'm all right," he said crossly. "I'll look after it later myself."
"Tommy!" said Tish. "Let them take your coat off."
"I won't have it off," he insisted, and when she persisted he was almost vicious.
Miss Lewis sat back on her heels and shook her head at me.
"He's a little dazed," she said. "How in the world did it happen?"
"I was walking on the roof," said Tommy more agreeably, "and I stepped on the skylight by mistake. It was dark underneath. It was a dam fool thing to do!"
The hall nurse and Miss Lewis exchanged glances, and the hall nurse looked at me and smiled.
"He is still dazed," she said, smiling. "How could he step on the skylight? It has a four-foot fence around it!"
We waited for him to explain further, but he let it go at that, and lay for a little while with his mouth shut hard and a queer thoughtful look on his face. He roused pretty soon, however, and grunted as if his shoulder pained him. Then he made Tish get up, and after a minute or so he sat up himself. He sat there gazing at the skylight, and a few drops of rain came down through the opening. Tish and I shivered. We were only partly dressed.
He saw it and was on his feet at once, pretty much himself.
"Now don't let's have any fuss about this, please," he said, addressing us all. "I forgot the skylight. That's all. I'm not hurt. Aunt Tish, and you and Miss Lizzie must go to bed this instant."
"What are you going to do?" Tish demanded sharply. "Going up on the roof again?"
"I'll be down pretty soon," he evaded. "Jacobs and I will just straighten this mess a bit."
I caught a look of intelligence between the two of them, and Jacobs spoke up.
"If the doctor'll lend a hand—"
"Tommy," Tish said suddenly, "the shoulder of your coat is soaked with blood!"
Tommy put his hand up and felt it.
"I've got a scratch somewhere up there," he said coolly. "It isn't going to be touched until the two ladies in negligee and curl papers are safe in bed with hot-water bottles at their feet. Miss Lewis, Miss Carberry is using her knee again!"
"I'd use a switch if I had one," said Tish, almost with tears in her eyes. But Tommy has the same will that she has herself, and we were downstairs between blankets, I on the couch in Tish's room and Tish in bed, with our feet against hot-water bottles, and drinking cups of hot milk, almost before we knew it.
But Tommy and the watchman did not clean up the broken glass in the upper hall. Whatever they did, that glass was still there the next morning, and none of us disturbed the general belief that it had been broken by the hail-storm that came just before dawn.
I was so hoarse the next morning that I could hardly speak, and Tish kept me on her couch. Her knee was stiff again, too. Including Aggie, although she had slept through the skylight incident, we were pretty well used up, and Tish would not let us go home. It was just as well. She should hardly have faced the events of the next two days without us.
Aggie had her breakfast in bed, but Tish and I had Briggs, the orderly who carried in our trays, set out a table for us, and were really .very snug. Tish was as cross as two sticks until she'd had her tea, when she grew more companionable.
"I want to ask you something, Lizzie," she said as she poured her second cup. "How, when we saw Tommy go into the mortuary, as plain as day, could