Chapter II: Part 2

“But you,” she interrupted him and Cub felt instinctively that the fire had reached the ridgepole, “you put the nursing service in a _very compromising_ position. A matter which reflects so unfavorably upon the _whole_ medical unit should, I most emphatically feel, have been discussed with the head of every department before being presented to the General.” A sanctimonious note entered her heaves of indignation.

“It was.”

He scratched his nose with such care that unless Miss Kerr had been painfully aware he was contemplating her large flat feet she would have noticed it. He knew that the nurses since time immemorial had called her “Foots,” and she knew he knew it.

“Discussed. Yes. Grilled, perhaps better suits what the nursing staff has been subjected to. But before we were disgraced I do think....”

“You speak as though you alone were bearing the whole thing.”

“Really ... er ... er,” her pompadour and bosom ascended, “Dr. Merritt always....” then her china blue eyes protruded and she snapped:

“_You_ speak as though you suspect my service, Doctor. In all the years Dr. Merritt’s staff....”

“We suspect nobody, Miss Kerr. We do _expect_ the nursing service to coöperate and do as it is ordered to by the medical. This is not a time for disagreements. Wherever the blame, until that blame is placed we are all culpable.

“Dr. MacArthur asked me before the meeting if there were any special nurses on B Ward. Are there?”

“None.”

“In what classes are the five student nurses?”

“Two in the class graduating in January, two in the next year’s class and one entered training last fall. Really, Dr. Ethridge, hasn’t my service been probed far enough? For you, Dr. MacArthur, the superintendent of nurses, and the head of the training school, to suspect my staff....”

Cub cut her short.

“We suspect nobody ... and everybody, Miss Kerr.”

But woman roused without consent of will is always woman who will not keep still.

“But to humiliate me before Dr. Paton ... he’s always been against me ... and dear Dr. Hoffbein and even in front of Dr. Peters ... without allowing me to utter one single word in my defense....”

“My dear Miss Kerr, will you never realize that you haven’t been, as you call it, ‘humiliated’? As your line of duty in a crisis, your service ... like ours ... is suspected of a failure ... somewhere.”

He rose and turned.

She towered from her chair with the determination of a mule.

“The idea! After all of these years! I can answer now ... and later, Doctor, for _my_ staff ... and _myself_.”

The last word came in two ascending notes of inquiry.

“I trust you are correct, Miss Kerr. Good evening.”

The water-off-a-duck’s-back nonchalance with which he quitted her office left Miss Roenna Kerr, Class of ’90 M. G. and head nurse in Medicine Clinic Elijah Wilson Hospital since 1900, with a sensation of standing with her feet in a puddle.

As the elevator girl respectfully bore him to the top floor where his early rounds began, Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior, slouched with his tongue in the corner of his mouth. He was thinking:

“Could break her damn neck! Sex-repressed old maid.”

Miss Patricia Withers had been night superintendent of nurses so many years that she had developed an hourly routine.

From two to four-thirty, after all of the clinics had checked-in their midnight patient rounds, she read mystery stories.

After thirteen false clues and flukes, she had just reached the place where the real murderer was to be revealed when her telephone bell intervened.

With an intensity, every motion of which was profane, she snatched up the receiver:

“Well,” upon a rising note.

The voice at the other end quaked:

“General Superintendent’s office?”

Miss Withers checked her: “Yes. What do you want?”

“This is Medicine Clinic, Ward B, Miss Evelina Kerr, Student Nurse, speaking. The telephone of the night supervisor Medicine Clinic does not answer, so I am reporting to your office the death of Alice Tuck, patient in Bed 11.”

“What?” Miss Withers’ breath pushed each letter through the receiver.

“Reporting the death....” the student nurse’s voice began to quaver it out again.

“I heard you before, child! Are you sure? No pulse? No respiration? Draw the curtains and leave everything exactly ... exactly, you understand until your superiors come....”

There seemed to be no response and Miss Withers feared the nurse had fainted.

“Can you hear me?” the authority in her voice would have revived the dead woman, if she had been nearer.

“Yes’m,” the girl breathed.

“Then do as I order.”

The night operator of the hospital was interrupted in her regular reverie as to whether she could get into the movies, by Miss Withers:

“Get Dr. Mattus. Get the morgue. Get Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior. Get Dr. Sarah James ... and get Miss Kerr.”

The telephone girl decided that was enough for the present and rang off.

“Hell-let-loose,” she muttered and began ringing Mattus’ ’phone.

Miss Withers sat drumming her desk. Again. That’s the third one! Superstitions! Like three on a match!

Dr. Sidney Mattus turned over in his white iron bed in his “Germicidal Cell,” and reached for the ringing telephone.

“Huzzies!”

He spat the word with sleepy vehemence born of unconscious fatigue. The contact between his ear and the receiver took several motions.

“Nayaa.” The inflection bore no interest, it was simply a sign that contact had been established.

“Dr. Mattus?” Miss Withers’ voice was like a splash of cold water.

“What is it?” he was bluntly and resentfully awakening.

“Miss Withers, speaking. The woman in Medicine, Ward B, Bed 11, is dead.”

“Humh? Dead? Couldn’t be!”

“Alice Tuck, Bed 11, Ward B....”

Mattus now wide awake thundered, “Who says so?”

“The floor night student nurse has just reported to me. That’s the bed....”

Mattus, too, had realized that it was. He was busily pulling on his pants. The receiver lay upon the pillow and he was calling into the mouthpiece.

“Get Cub Sterling. Notify Dr. MacArthur. Keep the day staff off the floor until notified. Call the morgue. Call.... My God, Miss Withers, call everybody but the police! No you don’t. Don’t call anybody but Sterling until I verify the nurse’s statement.”

He ran from the room, the telephone receiver still upon the bed and the lights burning. He started around the octagonal hall toward the stairway. Three flights below ... in the center of the lobby ... he could see the statue of Elijah Wilson.

As he reached the second floor he finished buttoning his pants and started toward the door of Dr. Sarah James, then remembered:

“Spending the night with her mother in Cincinnati. She would be!”

With an indignant grunt he had passed the statue and was letting out his stride down the long corridor.

As neither Dr. Cub Sterling nor Dr. Henry MacArthur answered immediately, the operator rang Miss Roenna Kerr.

Miss Kerr and Miss Withers were classmates at Mass. General and it seemed only fair to tip her....

The bedroom of Miss Roenna Kerr was bare as an operating room. It was also a front line trench, but the enemy in this case was age. Upon one chair reposed a specially built corset to hide the collapsing stomach. Under the bed stood, like a pair of dachshunds, two large white shoes with built-in bunion-rests. Under her chin nestled a wrinkle strap and her hair was in “papers.” Kid papers, too. She snored with heavy precision.

For the first time since the fire in Ward M she was awakened by the insistent clamor of her telephone. She arose, put on her wool wrapper, loosened the chin strap, and walked over to the ’phone.

“Eeenie, the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic, is dead!”

As quickly as the voice had come it had gone and for the first time in all the years she had been a nurse Miss Kerr stood inefficiently looking into a silent telephone!

Then, in her highnecked nightgown, she assumed her military bearing and muttered:

“I don’t care whose son he is!”

As assistant to Dr. Merritt, Cub Sterling had occupied a series of rooms on the second floor of the Administration Building. Graduated to “golden oak,” the internes called it. The furniture had belonged to Elijah Wilson.

Sterling still used the rooms.

When his telephone began ringing, he lay caticornered in his golden oak double bed with a pillow nestled into his neck. He had reached that second sleep where even an insistent telephone cannot cut the purple mist.

But the night operator of the Elijah Wilson had awakened Cub before. She began ringing in short hysterical jerks like the throbs of a bad heart.

Cub awoke.

The pillow—when he became aware it was a pillow—flew through a door and landed in the bath tub.

He took his fury out upon the ’phone.

“’Lo”

The result was the same as if he had said “Boo!”

Miss Withers actually lost her speech.

Cub repeated the process and then in exasperation rung off.

In the interim Dr. Mattus had cut in upon Miss Withers’ line.

“Miss Withers? Dr. Mattus. She’s dead!”

“Dead?”

“Stone! Get Dr. Sterling ... wherever he is ... get him ... quick!”

Cub had decided, now he was awake, to smoke a cigarette. The pillow was no go ... but that lovely little laugh when he handed her the cigarettes....

The ’phone interrupted him.

He repeated his “’Lo!”

“Dr. Sterling, Miss Withers,” the words were tumbling. “Pupil nurse Medicine reported patient in Bed 11, Ward B, dead four minutes ago. Dr. Mattus has confirmed the....”

The cigarette followed the pillow ... but was aimed at a different receptacle.

“Dead! You’re wrong. I saw her at rounds. About seven. Dead!” His incredulity almost Stopped his speech. “Gimme Mattus!”

“Dr. Mattus is on Ward B....”

“All right. All right. Tell him to wait till I get over there before ... and Miss Withers, call Dr. MacArthur right away. It’s....”

He had started to say murder ... but he hung up instead....

The night operator snapped to the exchange:

“Now keep on ringing and let me know when you get Riverside 7892, Dr. Henry MacArthur.”

“Say, what’s the trouble. Can’t you wait....”

“Listen, Pal,” the night operator responded. “You know as much as I do. A woman ‘went out’ and the whole place is raisin’ hell....”

“Aw girlie, quit y’kiddin’. What did they expect her to do? That’s a hospital, ain’t it?”

In what the architects refer to as “The Master’s chamber” of a white colonial house replete with early American antiques—mostly genuine pieces inherited from his wife’s mother—Dr. Henry MacArthur snored peacefully. His wife was in Paris and he had spent from ten to midnight propped up in bed, smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey highballs. The enjoyment of sprees is based upon comparison.

He lay with one arm against his head, the other thrown out, from habit, toward his wife’s side. He snored with vehemence; he had had a grand time....

Upon a bedside table lay a volume of Osler’s essays and several medical journals. They were dusty. Only the telephone appeared to have been used within the last week.

The telephone was as necessary to Dr. MacArthur’s existence as his eye-glasses. To be so excellent a director of so tremendous a hospital demanded that at any moment of any hour he must be immediately available and ready with a wise, sane, judicial decision upon any subject under the sun. Therefore wherever he went, whenever he went, whyever he went could be known by any head nurse who cared to inquire. That was why he had enjoyed his spree.

It had been the servants’ night off.

It had been utterly private.

He was topping it off with uninterrupted snores.

But the night telephone operator at the hospital worked upon the principle that all men past thirty snore. Therefore she took several surreptitious puffs of a cigarette, cut in upon the exchange and settled herself to the task of drowning out a snore ... long, continuous, vibrating, insistent, monotonous....

She was successful.

The monotony of the bell dripped through to Dr. MacArthur’s consciousness. He turned over and put the pillow over his head.

The operator took several more puffs and began again ... this time in the angry insistence of a crying baby.

MacArthur succumbed and reached feebly for the receiver. It was no use. She rang like a wrong number. But it was no use.

He was fully awake but kept his eyes shut, in an endeavor to keep them from aching, which they did anyhow ... terribly.

He fumbled the receiver off the hook.

His “yes,” was like a cow’s “moo.”

The voice which responded hit his brain with an impact. He opened his eyes and listened:

“This is Cub Sterling. The patient in Bed 11, Ward B, is dead. Found by the night nurse fifteen minutes ago.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, sir. Mattus and I have both examined her. There are no signs of ... of anything. It..... What shall we do, Dr. MacArthur?”

“Remove the body to the autopsy room. Order immediate autopsy. Keep entire staff intact. Notify your father. Keep everything and everybody composed and wait for me.”

The clearness in his head seemed to recede and he crawled out of bed with a horrible weariness.

He had fought death, deceit, politics, criticism, financial panics, women ... but this was his first experience with ... murder!

»III«
Autopsy Findings

Bear Sterling was tilted back in the desk chair. The half-egg-shell ceiling light blazed in his face. He wore the surgeons’ apron in which he had performed the autopsy. His lower jaw lay relaxed against the cushions of his chins. His eyes were peacefully closed. He was asleep. When the Elijah Wilson had been founded he had been the youngest surgeon, and had learned to sleep between crises. He did it automatically, naturally and silently.

Cub Sterling had twined himself around an uncomfortable office chair and was smoking cigarettes. His left shoulder was hysterically high.

He watched his father’s innocent repose with a visible irritation. He had struck no matches for over an hour. The smoking was incessant and the old butt served to light the new cigarettes.

Dr. Sidney Mattus sat stiffly in a straight chair. His head rested upon one corner of the back and his feet tucked into one of the chair rungs. He watched all of the men and held his eyes past them, apparently upon the coming dawn which could just be discerned through the high window.

Dr. Henry MacArthur sat across the double desk from Bear Sterling. He had shielded his brow from the glaring light and was soothing it like a man in constant pain. Occasionally he lifted his free hand and twisted his left ear thoughtfully.

No man had spoken for many minutes.

The air of the room was heavy with smoke, tension, the odor of formaldehyde and the chilliness of dawn.

It housed all the suppressed horror of a death chamber, and its occupants had the appearance of men awaiting execution.

Dr. MacArthur’s shoulders were hunched as though prepared for a blow; even in Bear Sterling’s slumber there was a sense of watchful waiting.

Cub was thinking. Shall I keep my mouth shut and watch that night student nurse...? She is a niece of Miss Kerr ... remember that ... old fellow!

Dr. MacArthur raised his head as though to answer and said:

“What did your father say about the heart?”

Cub’s eyes met his and he responded:

“In normal condition, considering the history, sir.”

“Strange. Was that your understanding, Mattus?”

“Yes, Dr. MacArthur.”

Silence lay over the air again. MacArthur put his head back into his hands and began checking it all over: Cub, Mattus, Bear, the student nurse, the orderly, the Head Nurse in Medicine Clinic ... the ... was there anybody else? Was it possible....

He stopped his mind and decided not to think until he had some facts. There would be no sense in clouding his faculties with hysterical superstitions. A clear head was what must be maintained.

The morning light was beginning to fill the room; it began to suffuse the faces of the four men.

MacArthur straightened and turned to Cub Sterling and Mattus, and smiled.

“I’m sorry boys if I’ve been taciturn ... but the Elijah Wilson is my only child ... and as a parent I guess I’m hopeless.”

“Good God, sir, we understand.”

Cub Sterling was upon his feet and towering over MacArthur. Mattus’ manner dropped from him and he became almost a schoolboy in his shyness.

“Of course we do,” he affirmed.

Bear Sterling stirred in his sleep and awoke. His steel-gray eyes were softened by the coming dawn. All three men turned to him. His eyes became pin points.

“Any news?”

“Not yet.”

“Wish Heddis hadn’t gone to that damn convention.”

“I’ve telegraphed for him. Could that sleeping potion have been administered hypodermically?” MacArthur’s voice was thin and old.

“Improbable. The order was for capsule,” Cub Sterling snapped.

“Then that puncture was from....” Mattus’ voice slid into the opening each man’s brain had already made.

“Durn these pharmacologists!” Bear announced and closed his eyes.

MacArthur took his watch from his pocket and said:

“Boys, since all tests are being done upon those organs, it may be hours yet. Go get some sleep and prepare for today. You’ll have a twenty-four hour job ahead of you to sit on the suppressed hysteria in Medicine Clinic ... and you have _got_ to sit on it!”

Mattus and Cub Sterling rose. Patients, another day, ... Tuesday! ... rounds, diagnoses ... they had forgotten it all! And within three hours it must be faced again.

They turned toward the door and it was opened in their faces by the second assistant chemist.

He was a small damp man whose limp black hair sweated into his muddy forehead. He said:

“Dr. MacArthur, Dr. Heddis and Dr. Maids are at the convention in Cincinnati, so I did the tests upon the organs you sent over....”

His voice was matter-of-fact. Its uninterested monotony awakened Bear Sterling.

He rivetted his eyes into the fellow and growled:

“Who in the hell are you?”

“A gentleman,” Dr. MacArthur said, “who is reporting upon some organs I sent over to the chemical laboratory, Dr. Sterling. Dr. Heddis’ second assistant.”

The chemist wiped his perspiring lip and continued in the voice of a bell-hop.

“None of the organs show traces of any foreign substance except the ingredients of a sleeping potion, which I believe was administered in powdered form, capsule probably. I have not proceeded with any obscure tests. Dr. Heddis will be back this afternoon. I regret I can make no further report until after a consultation with Dr. Heddis.”

Bear Sterling’s regular breathing was the only noise.

“Dr. Heddis is flying back. He should be here within two hours. Sorry to have called you at such an hour. Please keep on searching and consult Dr. Heddis immediately he returns. In the meantime, will you be so kind as to have a typed report of your findings in my hands by nine this morning? So kind of you!” Dr. MacArthur stated.

He ushered the chemist through the door and shut it after him. He turned to face the three men. He stood so erect that his wife would have known he had lost a battle and a tremendous one.

“Bear Sterling, did that body show a hypodermic puncture?”

“It did.”

“Then that syringe contained something ... I can’t seem to make my brain ... understand.”

At nine-fifteen, Dr. Henry MacArthur sat in his own office chair and peered intently at the innocuous findings of the second assistant chemist and the addenda which Dr. Heddis had written an hour before.

His long brow was pleated with straight thin wrinkles.

He was reading Dr. Heddis’ supplement with fascinated horror. It indicated, what he had feared, that the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic had not died of a sleeping potion. That somewhere in the Elijah Wilson....

His door into the corridor of the Administration Building was open. Except during meetings it was always open.

His secretary appeared in it and said, “Here is your mail, Dr. MacArthur.”

The tone of her voice braced him.

He smiled as she advanced and laid the letters upon the desk.

“I won’t dictate this morning, Miss Sadler. There is an important staff meeting. Please call off my appointment with the Woman’s Board, and that luncheon engagement with the man from the Duke Foundation ... and ... take all telephone messages unless they come from the staff, or Dr. Heddis.”

He was interrupted by the tall shadow of Cub Sterling.

The secretary turned and passed out.

Cub took the proffered chair and said, “Can they all come, sir?”

“I’m afraid not. Your father is doing a brain tumor on the Bishop’s aunt, Paton is scheduled for a hysterectomy on the president of the Woman’s College, Peters is demonstrating his new retina operation before some visiting medical students; but Hoffbein, Harrison, and Barton will be here, and we have the others’ approval to go ahead. I’m sorry they can’t come, but I do not feel I can assume the responsibility of delaying the meeting. Is Mattus coming?”

“No, sir. He’s doing my teaching rounds with the students.”

“Heddis believes....”

Dr. MacArthur slid the typewritten findings toward Cub. The young man lit a cigarette, looked away from them and frowned.

“Dr. MacArthur,” his voice had assumed its steely quality under which he always hid his emotions. He held out an envelope.

MacArthur took it automatically and asked, “What is it, son?”

“My resignation, sir.”

MacArthur straightened as though he had been struck by an electric eel. His blue eyes shot into Cub Sterling’s and he muttered:

“Are you afraid to face the music, Ethridge?”

“No, sir!”

“Then do it without hysterics,” MacArthur ordered, tearing the envelope into shreds as Prissy Paton’s purring voice interrupted:

“What, am I the first one here, MacArthur? Good morning, Ethridge. Pleasant morning. Cancerous through and through. No use removing anything. Fine woman, and great influence in her generation. Sewed her up again. No use. Will probably live several months. Are the rumors I hear true? Has there been another? I thought it was that yesterday. I said to myself, ‘it certainly has all the symptoms....’”

“Blow your bubbles out of the window, Boy Blue,” Dr. Harrison chuckled easing Dr. Paton into a chair. Then he walked over and shook hands with Ethridge Sterling, Junior, and with Dr. MacArthur.

He seated himself, took out his pipe and began talking of the tremendous discoveries of the ruins of Roman towns which had recently been ascertained in England by means of the airplane.

He filled the room with sanity. Dr. Paton went to his usual morning manicure, and Dr. Barton came in quietly, nodded, sat down and joined the listening group. Nobody noticed Flannel-feet Hoffbein’s entrance.

Dr. Harrison stopped and turned politely to Dr. MacArthur; like obedient schoolboys the other four men turned to MacArthur also.

“Gentlemen, I know it is most unusual and inconvenient to be called to a staff meeting without notice and at this hour. Still I believe the occasion justifies the summons. The thing of which Ethridge told you yesterday afternoon, is this morning.... At three A.M. the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic was found ... dead. There was an unexplained puncture from a hypodermic syringe in the left arm.”

“MacArthur,” Dr. Harrison’s voice had become an august bass, “are you s-u-r-e?”

MacArthur stood up and walked toward Dr. Harrison. In his extended hand was the typewritten sheet. He was even straighter than he had been in the autopsy room. For thirty-odd years his and Dr. Harrison’s great passion had been the Elijah Wilson Hospital. Harrison rose. They met in a patch of morning sunshine, which threw the sheen from Dr. Harrison’s head into a mirror over the mantel and back into Prissy Paton’s eyes.

Prissy gave a hysterical gasp and prepared to scream. Dr. Barton, in the voice he used with children, remarked, “Easy, sister. Easy!”

Nobody laughed.

Nobody registered it.

Hoffbein breathed like a returning pearl diver and enunciated carefully, “Read it, Harrison.”

As Dr. MacArthur returned to his chair and Dr. Harrison cleared his throat, the door into the corridor opened slightly and Princeton Peters’ peach-blossom face vied with the morning sun. Cub Sterling saw it and winced. Before any other man had taken it in, Princeton tiptoed into the room and his lavender eyes had assumed their death-mask purple.

With a precision which carried the force of bass waves against a rock ledge, Harrison began engraving into his brain and into theirs, the report of the second assistant chemist. As he turned the page to Dr. Heddis’ supplement, the men stirred nervously and Hoffbein’s eyes took on a mountain-out-of-molehill scorn.

Dr. Heddis’ addition stated: “The routine tests, afore referred to, are being checked by my first assistant, Dr. Maids, who returned with me; so far they reveal nothing other than the ingredients of a sleeping potion. These ingredients tally with those prescribed in the order filed upon the patient’s chart. Toxicology, like other branches of the Profession, is partly guess work. Since the cadaver bears evidence of a hypodermic puncture, and indications are that the potion was not administered that way, my belief is that this patient died of a syringe of some obscure drug.

“Therefore I am immediately beginning upon the obscure tests. It may take days to prove or disprove my conclusions. In the meantime, I repeat, a sleeping potion prescribed in capsule form, which the pharmacy compounded and the student nurse states she administered, explains neither the syringe puncture nor the death.

“Indications, it seems to me, point to an obscure and deadly drug. Possibly a drug which may be administered _per os_, and may have been so administered in the two previous cases. Any findings will be immediately reported to the General Staff or Dr. MacArthur.”

As the last words scraped into the consciousness of the men, a solemnity comparable to that which shadows the faces of pallbearers as they watch the coffin of a beloved comrade lowered, blanketed the staff. Whatever their petty hates and puerile quarrels, so far as the reputation of the Elijah Wilson was concerned, they agreed. It must not be damaged.

“He might be wrong,” Prissy quavered.

Nobody heard him.

“An obscure and deadly drug. Poison. And it may take days to discover it. Something we never heard of, probably.” Dr. Harrison’s voice seemed to be directed toward his own mind.

Dr. MacArthur replied:

“Let’s wait for Heddis on the chemistry, gentlemen. Ethridge and Mattus have spent the last two hours searching texts. They could find nothing. We would only waste time surmising.” Then, as though Prissy’s statement had just reached his brain he turned to him and said, “Yes, he might be wrong. But we can’t have this thing continue, and until he is proved wrong....” He shook his head slowly, “The effect was obvious. The woman is dead.”

For a full minute after Dr. MacArthur ceased speaking, no man spoke, and it was Prissy’s high treble which cut into their consciences.

“Ethridge ... er ... how was she last night?”

“I saw her around seven,” his voice took on its protective clip. “Her pulse was around a hundred. Considering her condition that was not odd. Her spirits were excellent. Eager for Father to go ahead with the operation. He saw her between eight and nine. Found condition quite in line with the way she was when I saw her. Is that your understanding, Dr. MacArthur?”

“And ... er ... by the way, where is your father?”

“He is doing a brain tumor, Dr. Paton,” Dr. MacArthur cut in.

“And how did your resident ... Doctor ... er?”

“Mattus.”

“Yes ... thank you ... Dr. Mattus, consider her?” Hoffbein slid his question into Cub.

“He saw her before she went to sleep around nine. He reports her pulse had dropped to around ninety; otherwise her condition remained unchanged. Anything else, sir?”

Hoffbein never answered verbally questions which did not flatter him. He shook his head thoughtfully.

By that time the staff had regained some measure of its equilibrium and Dr. MacArthur continued.

“Between the time Mattus saw her and three A.M. she was ... was....”

“I’m in favor of turning the whole thing over to the police,” Princeton Peters said most righteously.

“I’m not!” Dr. Harrison was vehement. “Outside of this room ... with the exception of Bear Sterling and Heddis ... no living person is aware of the situation,” he pointed the paper at Peters’ face. “Some linen is too foul to wash in public. Want to ruin the hospital, d’ye? We think we are pretty good at death and birth ... and we shall not be downed by....”

He waved the paper at them.

“Precisely....”

Then Dr. MacArthur realized he had expressed an opinion himself....

“What is your conclusion, gentlemen?” he hurried to say.

“Mistake to form one without an examination of the witnesses, I think ... if you can call them that ... suh,” Dr. Barton interposed.

“Quite. Ethridge and I decided upon that during the autopsy. And I have arranged with my secretary to call them quietly ... and separately ... in order to avoid.... We would have questioned them minutely this morning; but the seriousness of our decision ... whatever it is ... must be a responsibility we _all_ bear. D’y’see?”

“The night student nurse on Ward B is waiting. Shall I have her brought in, gentlemen?”

Hoffbein sensed a suppressed motion of Cub Sterling’s, a slight movement in the chair, an intangible gathering of forces.

“Isn’t this rather cruel?” Dr. Harrison suggested.

“Terribly. But how else will we ever...?”

Princeton Peters interrupted Dr. MacArthur.

“Murder is cruel, too.”

It was the first time the word had been mentioned. It rushed into the faces of the seven men like an angry wind.

During the ensuing vacuum, Dr. MacArthur lifted his telephone:

“Miss Sadler, will you please bring that pupil nurse to my office.”

The girl entered tensely.

Dr. Barton noticed her eyes were blue and too closely set; Prissy thought the face was sweet; Princeton Peters felt she had been nicely brought up; Dr. Harrison’s brain flashed “kitten lined with ox-hide”; Cub noticed her feet were flat, and Dr. MacArthur was too benevolent for a personal estimate.

“Won’t you sit down, Miss ... er....”

“My name is Evelina Kerr.”

Her voice held a note of defiance as she took the proffered chair beside Dr. MacArthur’s.

“My child,” he said soothingly, “this is probably the most trying duty you have had in your whole training ... and we regret that it is unavoidable. Will you please tell us plainly ... and as minutely as you can remember, exactly what happened after you went on duty in B Ward last night?”

She sat with her feet together, her hands folded in her lap, and a sullen calm in her voice.

“At nine o’clock, Dr. MacArthur, I went on night duty on B Ward of Medicine Clinic. Aunt Roenna ... I mean Miss Kerr ... was on the floor and Miss Kexter, the white nurse, who had waited to give me my instructions.”

“White nurse?” Princeton Peters’ voice was polite, but demanding.

“Slang for graduate floor nurse in charge,” Cub Sterling supplied.

The student nurse was silent in her resentment. Finally she continued:

“They left together. Then I took my temperatures, counted pulses, prepared the patients for the night.”

“The patient in Bed 11, Miss Kerr,” Hoffbein began in his mesmerizing voice. “How was she?”

The girl started and turned toward him with the underlying resentment of a schoolboy stopped midway through the multiplication tables.

“She was all right, Dr. Hoffbein. She had no temperature and....”

“Her pulse?” he interrupted again.

Cub Sterling stirred restlessly and lit a cigarette.

“It was between ninety and a hundred. By nine-thirty I had given all of my medicines....”

“Did she have any medicine?”

“Yes, Dr. Hoffbein, she did. She had a prescription of Dr. Sterling, Senior’s. A ... a sleeping potion.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“No, sir. It came up from the pharmacy filled.”

“Wasn’t the duplicate on her chart?”

“It was pheno-barbital,” Cub Sterling cut in raspingly.

The girl hesitated. She seemed to have lost the thread of her thoughts.

“Go ahead with the story, child,” Dr. MacArthur soothed.

She sat silent a moment and then continued:

“By ten o’clock I had finished my medicines, temperatures and pulses. The ward was quiet and I started to work upon the fever charts.

“The orderly was in the kitchen straightening up and fixing the breakfast trays. Two patients called for bed-pans. The orderly came to tell me that we were short two milk bottles. I telephoned the kitchens about them.

“Otherwise the ward was perfectly quiet, except for an occasional cough.

“At ten-fifteen, Miss Willis, the night supervisor in Medicine, made her rounds, and told me to watch the patient in Bed 11 very carefully.

“At eleven-forty I went to the medicine closet to prepare the hypodermic Dr. Mattus had ordered for another patient.”

“What kind of hypodermic?” Dr. MacArthur inserted.

“A strophanthin mixture. She’s a cardiac case.”

“A dispensary case of cardiac insufficiency,” Cub Sterling cut in.

Miss Kerr’s resentment was again expressed by silence. She seemed to be debating with herself.

“What happened?” Hoffbein demanded curtly.

For the first time since she had come into the room her speech came spontaneously.

“I ... I ... was boiling the syringe and had my back to the corridor door, and suddenly I felt someone passing in the corridor and turned around, and ran to the medicine closet door. There was no one in sight. And then I remembered the boiling syringe and went back to turn it off. I couldn’t leave until I had. It would have been ruined, and if the patient didn’t get her dose in time she might die.

“So I made myself finish filling the syringe and then went into the ward. There was nobody there, and all of the patients were sleeping, except Mrs. Witherspoon, who is queer in the head.

“I asked her if she had seen anybody and she said, ‘Yes.’”

The girl’s speech died in her throat and the seven men held their breath.

MacArthur regained his first.

“Whom did she say she saw, Miss Kerr?”

“She said she saw Dr. ... Dr. ... Sterling ... Junior....”

The girl turned her close-set eyes, acid with hate, upon Cub Sterling. Princeton’s lavender eyes, death-purple, Prissy’s green ones glinting, Hoffbein’s black ones deep as wells and the brown eyes of Doctors Barton and Harrison, gravely inquiring, turned upon Cub Sterling.

Only Dr. MacArthur’s eyes remained the same.

Cub Sterling answered the inquiry sharply.

“The patient is deranged, gentlemen. I was in my rooms.”

The door opened and Bear Sterling, his brows beetling, entered. Cub rose and gave him his seat. Dr. Harrison pulled up a vacant chair and motioned Cub into it. The chair was between his and Dr. Barton’s.

Prissy Paton looked at Princeton Peters and both of them decided they had better not speak ... now.

“And what happened next, Miss Kerr?” Hoffbein insisted.

“I went and asked the orderly if he had seen anybody and he said ‘No.’ So I went and looked at the patient in Bed 11 again. She was sleeping peacefully.”

Dr. Harrison leaned suddenly forward. His voice was acid:

“Did that deranged patient see anybody else?”

“No, sir.”

Then his voice stabbed:

“Did you?”

The close eyes shifted quickly. Her response came instantly:

“No, Doctor Harrison.”

A silence began stretching. The girl continued abruptly:

“Then I went back to my desk and finished my fever charts.”

“You did not call your supervisor?”

“No, Dr. MacArthur. I finished the fever charts and then made the midnight rounds. The patient in Bed 11 was still sleeping peacefully. I called in the rounds to my night supervisor and began studying my nursing manual. Three patients rang their bells between then and two. One wanted a glass of water and two, bed-pans. At two I gave the special medicines and then went back to my studying.”

“You did not look at the patient in Bed 11?”

“No, Dr. Harrison, she had no special medicine. At three I again made rounds and found the patient in Bed 11 was dead. I called my supervisor and failed to get her. I then called the general superintendent. She told me to draw the curtains around Bed 11 and wait further orders until Dr. Mattus came.

“He and Dr. Sterling, Junior, came within the next fifteen minutes. Dr. Sterling and Dr. Mattus rolled the bed off of the ward and into the elevator.

“I did not see the patient again. I finished my ward duties by seven, woke the remaining patients and told them that the patient in Bed 11 had been operated on in the night and removed to the Surgical Clinic, like Aunt Roenna told me to....”

“When did she tell you that?” Cub Sterling inquired.

The girl hesitated and flushed. For the moment she seemed to have lost her control.

“She didn’t. I had forgotten. Miss Willis, the night supervisor told me.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Kerr. Are there any questions any of you gentlemen wish to ask Miss Kerr, before she is relieved?”

“How long have you been in training?”

“Two years and five months, Dr. Harrison. I finish in December.”

“Thank you again,” Dr. MacArthur said as she rose, and then finished:

“Of all the people concerned in this, Miss Kerr, you are the youngest. Please do not forget that two years ago you took an oath concerning silence.”

Princeton Peters, who was sitting by the door, rose and opened it for her.

“Thank you, my dear!” he beamed.

No man felt she had told the entire truth.

After her departure, they sat silently awaiting the next witness. The horror of the thing seemed to have enveloped them.

The night orderly on B Ward entered. A thin, tubercular looking man with frightened eyes. Everything about him seemed collapsed, and yet still able to move.

Dr. MacArthur looked up:

“Good morning, William. How are you?”

The man’s appreciation spread over him.

“Well as can be expected, thank you, Doctor. How’s yourself?”

He turned to Prissy, Bear, Cub, and Harrison with a respectful “Good morning, Doctor.”

“William,” Dr. MacArthur began addressing him before he could enter into a personal conversation with each man, “were you on duty last night?”

“Yes, sir, I was. As usual. And a frightful night, too, sir.”

“How?”

“Well, Dr. MacArthur, to begin my rheumatism was bothering. And then everything seemed to have hid itself. And then that girl just in here was like a kitten on a brick, sir. Got my hair prickled, so to speak, by running back and asking me if I’d seen anybody on the ward about eleven-fifty and then saying she had _felt_ somebody.”

“Was there any basis for it?”

“None, sir, as I knows. It’s true I was in the kitchen during her feeling spell, so to speak. But, if you will pardon my remarking, sir, I been on that ward ten years coming August and it’s as hard to get past me as a watchdog, sir.”

“Yes, William. I know it is.”

“Thank you, Dr. MacArthur. Thank you.”

“How many times did the nurse come back?” Hoffbein smiled encouragingly.

“Only wunst. And then when she found the woman dead, sir! I was resting with my eyes shet, sir, and she well nigh scared me out of my wits!”

“Was she frightened?” Hoffbein insisted.

“It ain’t fur me to say, Doctor. I was too mad at having my rest ruined and too scared myself to see, sir. It wasn’t till Dr. Mattus came that I could stand away from the wall, sir. When Dr. Cub ... begging your pardon, son ... Sterling got there I was all right again.

“I been in the hospital long as most of you and I seen death every day, but....”

“And we know how proud you are of the hospital, William,” Dr. MacArthur cut in, “and what a help you have always been to it. So you must promise me, upon your oath, before these gentlemen, that you will not repeat to any living soul a single word of what you know or suspect about the trouble.”

Dr. MacArthur drew the old man’s eyes to his and William replied:

“I promise, sir.”

“Thank you, William.”

Dr. Peters held the door open.

The old man started toward it and turned midway.

“Dr. MacArthur, do I ... do I...?”

“You do. Tonight and every night.”

It was apparent that every man felt from the minute William began speaking that he was innocent. During his interrogation they had relaxed.

In the interim between his exit and the entrance of Peter Rathbone, Chief Pharmacist, the tension had fallen considerably.

“Baldy” Rathbone shook them out of a reverie.

He had a body like a triangle upside down. His wide shoulders showed strength and assurance. He was a youngish middle-aged man. A spreading part ran up the center of his scalp and connected his wide forehead with the bald spot on top.

He had been raised an orphan and worked his way through college at night, and then worked his way up at the Elijah Wilson. There was a sense of definite knowledge about the face and figure. His eyes bore the marks of childhood suffering, but his smile heartened the men.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

His voice was a deep resonant baritone.

“Sit down, Baldy,” Dr. MacArthur motioned to the “witness chair”; then a deep blush steeped his face, and he smiled. Rathbone returned the smile, took the chair, and ran his eyes over the staff. He had never seen any of them so perturbed.

Dr. MacArthur said carefully:

“Er ... er ... Rathbone, did you check the prescriptions?”

“As far as possible, sir. A compounded prescription, as you know, cannot be checked as to relative quantities and so ... but the ingredients from the remainder (I understood from the order that I was to have two capsules compounded, in case the first failed to take effect) were checked. They tallied as to substance, perfectly.”

“Who compounded the prescription?” Dr. Hoffbein queried.

“McInnis, my first assistant, sir. He can be trusted.”

He was interrupted by the telephone bell. It jarred the men like a steam siren. MacArthur’s, “Yes, Heddis. Are you sure? Soon as possible. Thank you,” held the eight men to a dead silence. A silence which screamed for knowledge.

Dr. MacArthur placed the hook too carefully upon the receiver, Hoffbein thought, and then he spoke:

“Coniine, gentlemen. One of the deadliest poisons. Heddis will be over in fifteen minutes.”

“Whew!” Dr. Harrison ejaculated.

“Hypodermic syringe, then,” Bear Sterling growled.

Cub Sterling jumped as though he had been shot.

They all turned toward him.

“What’s the matter, Ethridge?” Dr. Harrison put his hand on his knee....

“Nothing. Except she was giving hypodermics all night. She....”

Dr. MacArthur’s pointer nose had a dreadful struggle with his judicial brain.

“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.