Chapter VII: Part 7

After he was gone Sally Ferguson pulled the sheets over her head and sobbed dryly for five minutes. Then she tiptoed over to the washbasin, put cold water under her eyes and got back into bed.

Her mouth was set. Her head was very high.

He was as innocent as she was and ... by God ... she’d prove it. But you couldn’t prove anything lying here being policed every pulse counting. You had to get out and think and....

She rang her bell; when the student nurse came, she smiled wanly and said:

“Dr. Mattus and Dr. Sterling said I might get up for a while this afternoon. Will you bring me my clothes now? They said from three to five.”

The girl drank the smile. When she returned with the clothes she apologized:

“Can you manage alone, Miss Merriweather? The other nurse has the cramps and doesn’t want to report off duty, less she has to. So I’m doing most of...?”

“Sure,” Sally smiled. “Poor kid!”

The girl turned from the door and said, “Ring if you need me!”

A terrible strength began to flow through Sally. A strength which centered just under the skin and left her vitals hollow and quivering. It took ten precious minutes to dress. Inside, and with every motion of pulling on stockings, adjusting garters, smoothing her hair, inside, deep inside, her consciousness sang:

“Cub Sterling, you are not! You are not! Cub darling, I love you! I love you!”

The deep singing was like a walking cane as she started across the room for the door. She pulled the knob, hesitantly, ascertained the student nurse was out of sight, and gathering all of her strength, ran the few feet to the screen porch door. When her knees gave way she was on the concrete steps, halfway down to Ward A, and Ward A was the ground floor.

A wild mental clearing made her understand that with or without strength, she had to reach that porch off Ward A, get over the railing and drop to the ground, before the nurses began rolling the patients out for their afternoon airing.

Ten minutes later, a young girl, walking with an erectness every motion of which hurt, entered Otto’s restaurant and leaned against the deserted bar.

She fastened her violet eyes into Otto and said:

“I love Cub Sterling as much as you do. I think I can save him ... if you’ll lend me a dollar for two hours....”

The money was in her hand before Otto could open his lips. When he did open them, the girl was already in a taxi-cab, and the cab was coasting down the hill from the hospital.

When Miss Carruthers, in response to a telephone call, brought Evelina Kerr, student nurse, to Dr. MacArthur’s office, Matt Higgins rose from a chair and said:

“Miss Carruthers, Dr. MacArthur just stepped out a minute.... He asked me to wait until he returned and ask you to please let this nurse...?”

His “silver threads” smile brought an immediate acquiescence. The old lady smiled, backed out, and Higgins offered the student nurse a chair.

She sat upon the edge, her narrow feet together and the bony ankles pressing against each other. Higgins offered her a cigarette. Her refusal was jerky.

“Excuse me,” he said walking toward the door. “My mistake. I don’t want to get you thrown out.”

She flinched slightly and her round chin tried for a well-bred hauteur. It missed.

When the door was closed, Higgins looked squarely, slowly, with open summary, at the girl. She thought he was flirting. When his eyes began their spreading lid trick, she felt as though he were pointing the muzzle of a pistol toward her. She tried to fight his silence with words.

“Who are you? Why are you looking at me that way?”

Higgins laid his head against the door. His lids continued widening.

Her words beat the air:

“Stop looking at me! Stop it!”

His words were like an ice cloth against her brain:

“Why don’t you quit lying, girlie?”

The battle was uneven. Perfect physical control against shattered nerves. Her close-set eyes began to ferret. She made a last effort to hide behind her sex.

“I’m not lying. I don’t know what you are talking about! You are crazy!”

Matt’s eyes stayed steadfast. He said very slowly:

“No ... it’s your aunt who is crazy!”

Her beaten nerves threw the battle back to her body. She leaped to her feet.

“She’s not. She’s not! I swear to God she’s not!”

Higgins walked over and clenched his hands into her shoulders.

“Look at me!”

She fought to get loose.

He increased, gradually, his hold.

“Look ... at ... me...!”

Her piglike eyes cringed before his steel ones.

Quickly, unexpectedly, he released his hold and smiled at her. His voice was deep.

“Kiddo, I’m sorry for you. Sit down!”

She fell into a chair and began dry-sobbing. He filled a glass from the thermos jug on the mantel and placed it against her lips. And while she drank, with his free hand he soothed her ugly little forehead as one soothes a terrified child.

Kindness was the one thing the girl had never known. She couldn’t fence against it.

Higgins’ reasoning voice suggested:

“Tell me about it, won’t you?”

He took the glass and set it upon the table. Then he took her sweating hand and held it protectingly in his.

The words cascaded out of her:

“She’s not killing them! I swear to God she’s not! She’s ... she’s ... I can’t tell you ... she’ll have me thrown out.... I can’t! I can’t!”

Higgins put his other hand beneath the hand he was already holding.

“Go on!” he ordered in a monotone.... “She’s...?”

His eyes picked into the shady depths of her close-set ones. He smiled again....

The girl’s terror fell away. She whispered:

“She’s ... taking ... morphia-off-the-ward-I’m-on-in-her-clinic. At night. Between the supervisor’s rounds!”

Neither the pressure of his hands nor his voice changed.

“For herself?”

“Yes!”

“Is she an...?”

The girl’s whisper was almost inaudible....

“I ... I ... think ... so....”

Higgins’ voice became stern.

“Then how do you know she’s not ... the murderer?”

The girl shot back instantly:

“Because she ... didn’t come until I notified her ... the night ... the nurse ... went out!”

“Maybe you didn’t see her.”

Her words came in gasps:

“I ... I ... counted-the-tablets ... when-I-came-on ... duty ... and-when-I-went-off. They ... checked...!”

“Perhaps she didn’t take any to throw you off the track. Had you thought of...?’”

The terror in her eyes and voice made Matt shiver.

“No...!”

The word was a wail.

He changed his tactics immediately.

“That’s not likely, though. When the urge is ‘on’, nothing ... not even murder ... can stop it.”

He had risen while he was talking and opened the door into the corridor. Ten minutes had passed. Dr. MacArthur entered. Higgins said to the girl:

“You have nothing more to worry about. Dr. MacArthur and Miss Carruthers will stand behind you ... till you graduate!”

Then he went out of the Administration Building, down the main corridor of the hospital. The corridor was nearly empty. In the distance five probationers, with new text books under their arms, were coming toward him, but they were the only people in sight. The wards had settled down for the afternoon, the white nurses were off duty, and two student nurses on each floor and the head nurse of each building were on duty. The internes and resident were doing lab or case studies.

After he rounded the corner and started toward Medicine Clinic, he met more people and an air of increased tension. The tension was especially plain in the orderlies and maids. He remembered that he had forgotten to tell Snod about the roses, and considered going up to Ward B after he entered Medicine Clinic, then decided to let it slip. That would be dangerous. Even though he had his group cornered there was no reason to take unnecessary chances.

Good thing he had spent part of last evening checking up on Miss Kerr’s past. Now that he had the dope information....

Lil Parkins was the best woman he had ever worked with. She smelt people like a dog. Kind of sixth sense and she never missed. Her hunches had made his reputation.

The explosive air hung over him like a pall. Through an open door he could see Miss Roenna Kerr, her flat feet primly under her desk, her white pompadour overhanging her lean face....

He walked straight into her office and closed the door behind him. Her pen dropped from her fingers and she turned her long head. Then her face became as devoid of expression as a mule’s. Panicky and blank with fear. But her long years of training came briskly to her aid.

“What can I do for you? Is there something in the Clinic that you failed to see, Mr. Immerheld?”

“I’m not Mr. Immerheld of Cornell Medical Center, Miss Kerr. I am from New York, though, and you can be so good as to tell me,” his gray eyes narrowed and tried to make her china blue ones rise above his necktie, “how you happened to have this?”

He drew from his back pocket the doll in the blue dress and frilled bonnet, that Mattus had found in Miss Kerr’s desk, and turned it over on its stomach.

The raucous, “Pa-pa! Pa-pa! Pa-pa!” kept repeating itself slowly and insistently.

“Turn it over! Turn it over! I’ll tell you,” there was relief in her voice.

“My niece had a P. M. several ... about ... a week ago ... and went to a street fair and won it. She brought it to me....”

Higgins seated himself carefully in a chair beside her desk and said:

“Half an hour ago the doll that your niece won was lying in her top bureau drawer!”

Without intending to do so, her china blue eyes raised to his and he shot past her protective covering into her unprepared ear:

“Is morphia quicker than cocaine?”

From inside, without intention, she answered:

“Yes. Much.”

Then she realized what she had said and opened her lips to make a statement about “depending upon the condition of the patient....”

Higgins did not allow her to utter the words. Once an addict has acknowledged the habit, he knew she was powerless to refrain from talking about it.

“What’s the shot you use?”

“An eighth used to do. It’s a half now....”

Her hands began to flutter wildly. Higgins turned the doll over again. Its nasal whining raised the electric tension.

His voice cut through the whining. He said:

“It was clever of you not to take any tablets the night you did the nurse....”

“I didn’t! Before God, I _didn’t do_....”

“You don’t like Cub Sterling, do you?”

The question shot at her like a bullet. She staggered internally.

“Dr. Hoffbein doesn’t like him, either! Dr. Hoffbein used to put you to sleep after...!”

“After what?” she defied and cowered at the same time.

“After that woman doctor you lived with died.”

“That’s not so. How do you know that?”

“Dr. Hoffbein.”

“He didn’t tell you either. He just called me....”

“Maybe it’s in your case history, then....” He leaned quickly forward. “Why did you hide the doll?”

“To protect my niece.”

He changed his tactics:

“Did you use your own syringe on the nurse?”

The old woman’s facial muscles contracted. Her yellow teeth laid bare against her purpling lips. Her bust relaxed hopelessly and then she began to talk, openly, helplessly:

“I didn’t do the nurse. Really, I didn’t. I didn’t do any of them! ... I ... I ... was ... there ... Monday ... but....”

“Who did ... them ... if you didn’t?”

Her china eyes protruded.

“One ... one of ... the Cub Sterling’s!!!”

“What?”

The words bit through her old teeth:

“There are two of them! ... Two...! ... Two Cub Sterlings...! I _saw_ them that night ... of the first traceable murder Monday night! ... I was coming out of the Medicine Closet with my ... and one of them was bending over the patient in Bed 11, and one of them was shadowed against the window shade bending over the patient in Room Two.

“And the one ... bending over the patient in Bed 11 ...” her words began to burst ... “_saw me_! I know _he saw me_! ...”

Higgins cut in sternly:

“It was your duty to ... investigate....”

Her hands began to pick her bosom wildly.

“I couldn’t.... I couldn’t.... Don’t you see I couldn’t?”

“Why didn’t you tell Dr. Hoffbein...?”

“Because ... because ... he had said if ... I ever went back ... to my ... habit ... on duty....”

Higgins nodded grimly and hunched forward.

“Who around this hospital looks like Cub Sterling?”

“Nobody! I swear nobody! Oh, God, I’ve been over every single face since then ... in my mind ... and on sight.... Nobody!”

“One of those Cub Sterlings was a man who knew you were taking dope, Miss Kerr ... who knew that when you saw him ... you’d keep your mouth shut. Who knew...?”

“Nobody but ... my ... niece! That’s why I took the doll. To keep the Staff from ... grilling her ... I was afraid....”

“You are missing out somewhere. Who checks the dope?”

“The floor nurse, once a month. She gives the sheet to me and I turn the clinic sheets over to the pharmacy....”

“Ah, the pharmacy! They knew, Miss Kerr!”

“No! No! They didn’t know. I ... I ... changed ... the sheet from Ward B ... the day I turned it in ... so as to cover....”

“When did you turn it in?”

“The day of the first traceable murder.”

“Take your telephone, Miss Kerr, and ask the white nurse from Ward B if the pharmacy called her to check her figures.”

“She’s off duty now.”

“Get her in her room!”

The old nurse hesitated and cringed.

Higgins’ voice cut her into action.

“If you want to save your own neck ... take it!”

When Miss Kerr hung the receiver back upon the hook she whispered:

“They did. She ... read them ... her pencil memorandum ... on Monday....”

Higgins rose steadily and said carefully:

“If you go on as though nothing has happened, you may get off ... scott free. As soon as I step from this door, until I return, there will always be somebody watching you. Is the pharmacy next to the Administration Building?”

Her wilted voice responded:

“Yes. It is off the main corridor ... but I can’t go on! I _can’t_!”

He stood against the closed door and snapped:

“Would you rather have a chance to resign ... or spend the rest of your life in the pen?”

“Resign!”

“You are not off duty until seven! Understand?”

The old pompadour shook carelessly.

Higgins opened the door and started through the lobby and up the main corridor toward the pharmacy. His brain was reeling. He was dizzy.

Two Cub Sterlings! God Almighty! Suppose she was lying? Suppose? ... She was too frightened to leave, though.... The best thing to do was sit tight and look over the pharmacy staff.

When Snod Smooty came back on Ward B, he found two student nurses on duty and the women remarkably quiet. They were still subdued by the grandness of Dr. Cub Sterling’s leaving his dying father to come to see about them. They were excited over his furrowed face and his sudden ageing. They didn’t call it that, but they felt it, profoundly. To the funeral-wake-type, death is always as exciting as birth, and the death of a famous doctor....

Snod tiptoed up to lower a window shade near Lil Parkins’ bed. She was sleeping peacefully and contentedly. The same feeling of admiration which the other women had experienced for Cub Sterling had taken the form of protective relaxation in Lil Parkins. He would see that nothing happened to her. He had told her to go to sleep.

An expression of sudden warmth lay over the colorless features of Snod Smooty as he looked at Lil. A grand girl, Lil! And a swell detective! Do anything for a pal. Nursed him through pneumonia last fall, just because he was her friend....

The day orderly beckoned to him and he went back to washing dishes. They worked quietly and with the doors closed. One of the nurses came to say she was going off the floor a minute.

The day orderly was a squashy fellow who talked all the time. Snod had known it soon as he set eyes on him. He finished the saucers and left the man still talking. His garrulousness had put Snod’s nerves on the jump and he was hungry, too.

Three-thirty and the fool wouldn’t leave him long enough to get even a bottle of cream outa the ice box! Maybe a cigarette would help....

Snod eased over toward the door and through it. Halfway up the ward corridor, he caught sight of chubby Bessie Ellis sitting up in her crib and playing with a doll ... exactly like the two Dr. MacArthur had shown them yesterday.

He ran noiselessly to her crib and smiled at her. They were friends immediately. As he passed the medicine closet he saw the single student nurse coming out of the nurses’ lavatory.

When he smiled at Bessie he took hold of the foot-board of the crib to steady himself. She was six, and the pink dress of the doll looked pretty against her brown curls and eyes.

It was the hardest job he had ever tackled. He said slowly, and his face was innocent and friendly:

“Where did you get that new dollie Baby?”

“Dr. Cub jes’ gave her to me....”

Snod reeled from the bed and staggered toward that of Lil Parkins. The other women were still asleep. Some of them were snoring. He leaned over and peered behind the drawn curtain.

Lil’s eyes were wild with fear and her face began to contract.

“Stop it!” Snod’s voice was harsh and heavy. “Tell me! You all right?”

She nodded weakly and her intense features began kaleidoscoping her thoughts:

“God Almighty! It’s Dr. Cub Sterling. I trapped him ... cold.... He thought I was asleep and when he leaned over me ... with the hypodermic....” her profile shadow convulsed against the white pillow, “I ... opened ... my eyes. He had pulled the curtains to ... get me...!

“I said, ‘You!’ and started to scream ... and he drew back and his eyes, Snod. Oh, God ... run mad, together. Crazy! And then he cocked his left shoulder, shrugged, lowered his curly head and bowed himself ... out.

“It’s spells, Snod. He wasn’t that way this morning. His eyes! I couldn’t scream. My heart....”

“Rest it, kiddo, till I get Matt.”

Snod coiled around and his eyes with the sudden sharpness of great stress saw the tall figure with the high shoulder walk out of the linen closet and enter the elevator.

And then swiftly, noiselessly, and panther-like he followed.

The elevator door closed just as he reached it.

Three minutes later Snod Smooty slouched up the main corridor. Nobody was in sight, either way, except in the distance was a man. The man wore a white hospital coat, and Snod eyed him hopelessly; then Snod’s eyes narrowed.

The man’s left shoulder had lifted and from the left patch pocket there was dangling a frilled pink organdie doll bonnet!

Snod gathered his muscles and began to run....

He was almost up with the man when a panicky woman opened a side door and halted his progress.

She fell into his arms, before he could sidestep her, and the agony of her face made him involuntarily support her.

“The Maternity Clinic. Quick! For God’s sake, quick!”

Snod looked both ways. Only the tall figure was visible.

“For God’s sake, hurry!”

He gathered the tortured body of the woman into his long arms and began running with his back to the retreating figure.

Nature had tripped him, and he knew it.

When he had helped the orderly inside the door of the Maternity Clinic, who awaited such emergencies, to get the panic-stricken woman onto a handy stretcher, Snod turned swiftly and started slowly back toward the Administration Building.

MacArthur would know where Matt was. No use trying to locate him through Miss Kerr.

God in Heaven! Young Sterling! And they had been so damn near framing three innocent people! Within that space of a hundred yards, he must readjust his mind.

His ineffectual thin body shambled innocuously along....

Behind him there burst upon the air the perfect trilling of a robin. Snod slid over to a window and looked stupidly at the grass in the back garden.

Matt Higgins drew alongside and asked loudly:

“Beg your pardon, but could you tell me the way...?”

Snod began pointing through the window at the different buildings. His eyes followed his fingers. His voice, once it had formulated an action, was like a scimiter blade. It shimmered:

“Where’s MacArthur?”

Higgins was harassed and hot. He was measuring his forefinger against the left thumb.

“Gone to train to meet dead nurse’s mother. There are two Cub Sterlings, old Kerr says. Just confessed. Claims she’s seen ’em. On my way now....”

Snod’s loose hands continued their flappings.

“Kerr’s innocent. Two? Jes-sus! One Cub Sterling just tried to murder Lil. She frightened him off!”

Higgins face grayed.

“W-h-a-t?”

Snod snapped, “I nearly caught him. Had a doll bonnet hanging from his pocket, walking up this corridor five minutes ago. Pregnant woman....”

A smile almost split Matt’s lips. Words knocked it off:

“I’ll call MacArthur at the station. Have him get the sheriff to send a warrant immediately. No! I’ll get the kids’ man. His brother is Attorney-General. He can act quicker. Then I’ll watch Cub Sterling, until they come. Give me time to think. Something don’t click. I still don’t believe it...! You go to the pharmacy before you go back to Lil ... over there ... and see if the pharmacist is in ... if he is watch him until I come....”

Snod’s hands continued their waving. But his eye was out upon the corridor. He hissed:

“A running man.... Turn around, Matt!”

Matt whirled. Ahead, almost through the door into the Administration Building, and round the statue of Elijah Wilson, careened Cub Sterling.

Higgins’ legs were in motion and his words shot back:

“I’ll follow this one. You watch out for Lil! The other may try again....”

Snod’s face remained blank. His biscuit watch was in his hand. Four doctors were coming up the corridor. His deferential voice followed Higgins:

“You have five minutes to make that train, sir.”

»X«
The Cupola

As the taxi woggled downhill, Jumbo’s words pushed past the busy clicking of the meter into Sally’s weary brain. Once inside her consciousness, they rolled around like brightly colored Christmas tree balls, and butted into each other and crashed. Far down beneath the shattering concussions her mind began reverberating:

“Think it over, think it over, think it over.”

Twice she decided to go to Bucks and then she knew it would be hopeless. They couldn’t help if a big story broke. They didn’t make the news. They ... they were like buzzards ... and she must do something to keep them ... from....

Murdering patients.... Oh God! Oh God! ... No! ... They are wrong!

She pushed her curly bright hair back from her sweating forehead, and at _The Call_ building gave the driver the dollar, and slipped unnoticed into a crowded elevator and out again in the main hallway of the sixth floor.

This wouldn’t do. Somebody might come along.

She leaned against the wall for a moment, then decided to walk up to the seventh floor. There was a vacant suite of offices on the corner; perhaps if she went where there was plenty of room her brain would get ... wider....

Half way up the marble stairs began rising and hitting her in the face, and then slipping back so that she couldn’t quite reach them when she stepped. She slumped and rested.

If Cub’s arms were only around her now. How many murders had there been? Four! Jumbo had said four, and the last a nurse. The night he brought the last cigarettes. She hadn’t seen him since the morning after ... the nurse.... Not since Dr. Bear began dying ... but she knew! She knew!

Oh God! God! It wasn’t Cub! It wasn’t! A murderer couldn’t kiss you so that your soul ran up and spread out flat under his lips.... A murderer couldn’t look at you so that you said you were sorry, even when you tried not to be.... A murderer’s hair wouldn’t fold into little waves where it spread under the curve at the back of his neck.

But how could you tell a paper that? How could you make a city editor understand ... when you had no proof ... that a man was innocent and framed?

There must be some way! You had to think clearly to see it, and the place to think was upstairs with the whole world spread out below in orderly rows and streets. Just as the sun spread over the city, and strengthened it, so control made it possible.... Two hours! Less than that now....

She clenched her fists tightly and rose with studied steadiness. Necessity cleared the brain. Working in a newspaper office taught that the best ideas came under pressure. She had gone out on enough murder stories to know the person who worked his brain ... could beat anything ... even newspaper reporters and ... police.

By the time Sally reached the door of the vacant suite, the seams of her stockings were straightened and her reddening eyes carefully and painstakingly dry. There was an air of jauntiness about her small figure.

She had a head and was going to use it!

Her violet eyes had changed to the deep purple and iridescent white of orchids. She closed the door and stood against it. Then her irises focused.

A stooped, intent figure was silhouetted between the rows of windows and the long city vistas below. For a second her artistic sense forebade speech.

Like an apple tree, gnarled and buffeted by too much winter, the thin shoulders, flat chest, beak nose, and long hands ribboned with purple veins, strained after the peering eyes which were hidden by a pair of binoculars. The dirty white hair drawn into a tightly furled knot, on the upper front of the head, helped Sally recognize the next-to-the-oldest-employe of _The Morning Call_. She momentarily forgot Cub Sterling.

“Emma! What are you doing?”

Emma wheeled around, and the binoculars fell from her hands. Sally moved with extended palms to catch them.

“Oh, it’s you!” Emma’s voice was pleased and birdlike. “They don’t drop, Miss Ferguson. Mr. Bucks told me you was on vacation. Did you have a nice time, dearie?” She reached toward the long leather thong which held the binoculars around her scrawny neck and then embarrassment replaced pleasure.

“What _are_ you doing?”

“Well, I tell you, dearie. Whin I can’t git inta th’ offices on six ri-away, I jes’ comes here for a little while and takes in the city ... kinda. It helps a lot, sometimes, for bein’ lonesum, Miss Ferguson.”

The news-story instinct welled up. Sally eased down into a window sill. Perhaps, if you shifted the mind completely....

“Where did you get them?”

“Well, dearie, it’s like this: My boy ... you know ... what was killed at the Argonah, had ’em.” Emma’s lower jaw dropped. “His buddy ... my boy had got ’em off’n a dead German General, and you kno’ what fine things Germans makes ... well, his buddy took ’em off’n my boy’s body after ... and brought ’em back to me. And, Miss Ferguson, he seys whin he give ’em to me, he seys, ‘These is t’gif ye a chancst t’see life.’

“Ain’t that sweet, dearie? And they’se bin the greates’ consterashun thu m’sorrow. Whin I gits t’thinkin’ ’bout my boy and wishin’ f’ gran’chillrin ... you kno’ ... I jes’ comes up here and takes in a few lifes.”

A swell newspaper story! “Vicarious living,” Sally muttered.

Emma, heard it and protested:

“No mam! Nuthin’ like that! I never looks beyond Second Street, Miss Ferguson. Two blocks this side of Beeker Street is an awful nice I-talyan neighb-hood. It’s sweet t’see th’women nursin’ babies on do’steps. That’s helped me an awful lot ... sometimes....

“Wouldn’t you like to take a look, dearie?”

Emma removed the thong from her neck with the care a concert master saves for his violin. Her face had now a deep, sweet warmth. Miss Ferguson had given her five dollars at Easter and at Christmas and this was a chancst....

Sally saw the look and rose. The folds of her blue crepe dress molded the curve of her slender thighs as she lifted the thong carefully over her head, adroitly around her white cowl collar, and walked toward the window.

Emma stood proudly by and suggested:

“If you look tword the sout’wes’ down by Sears, Roebuck, you kin’ jes’ catch a piece of the bridge ’roun’ th’corner buildin’. It’s awful prutty at sunset.”

Sally, who was something of a football fan, realized these were eight-power Zeiss binoculars. They brought the city out with startling clearness. She looked for the University, and on out toward Sears, Roebuck and across the river. Then she began picking out the Italian district near Becker Street and the Speakeasy just around the corner near Pershing Road.

“They’re wond-er-ful, Emma!”

“Ain’t they gran’?”

Suddenly she remembered about Cub, and trained the glasses upon the Elijah Wilson four blocks uphill. Cub was over there ... somewhere.... Cub was....

She began going over the building carefully. How pink the bricks were in the afternoon sun! The trees up Wilson Boulevard looked so green and feathery! How....

Her eyes found the cupola upon the top of the Administration Building. She had always wanted to see what was in that cupola! She unscrewed the lenses to their full power. They came into focus. One of the grimy windows was open. How lucky! She trained them into it.

Scissored against the far white wall was Cub Sterling sitting at a small table. His hand held a hypodermic syringe. He was laughing....

God Almighty!

Sally staggered as if she had been struck. Emma, supporting her, soothed:

“I orta told you, dearie. If you looks too much you gits dizzy.”

“Emma,” her tone was parched and pleading, “look through these at the cupola of the Elijah Wilson Hospital and tell me what you see.”

The old woman took the binoculars, readjusted them ... it seemed to Sally that she used a thousand years ... and said:

“Shucks, honey, I don’t see nuthin’ but a curly-headed man settin’ at a little table writin’ in a book.... H’m ... he’s awful nice lookin’!, too....”

Sally snatched the glasses and spread her feet to prop herself while she projected them. Her eyes, as she stiffly moved the dials, were filmy, but within seconds she had the lenses magnifying the cupola and as a man might repeat by rote what he knew by heart, she forced her horror-stricken eyes to focus again.

What they saw was Cub Sterling sitting at the same small table, a pen in his hand, writing swiftly and absorbedly in a small book. Behind him was the same big red splotch ... as if a bucket of blood had been thrown against the wall ... the same ... small medicine case between two of the sooty windows.

But before him, upon the table, was the hypodermic syringe. Her eyes kept coming back to it over, over and over, as the eyes of a bird fascinated come back to a snake. And upon his face, as he wrote, was the awful look which she had never seen there, until he held that syringe up and laughed.

As she gazed, like an echo in the distance, little things about him began to be unfamiliar. There wasn’t so much distance under his ear and collar, where she had buried her nose. And his hair wasn’t that long ... not nearly.... He had just had his hair cut ... Tuesday....

Maybe that was somebody else.... Maybe....

The glasses began slipping from her hands and while they fell, with the rapidity of a panic-stricken brain, she decided.

If it was Cub and she telephoned him and told him she needed him terribly and to come right away and he came, then it wasn’t Cub. And if he didn’t come, but stayed right there in that chair all the time....

Well, you had to know ... sometime....

“Emma,” her voice was crisp and had lost its note of friendly equality, “put those binoculars to your eyes and watch that man in the top of the hospital till I come back.... Don’t take your eyes off of him _for one second_. It’s ... it’s ... whether I’m ever happy depends on his sitting in that chair till I come back.”

The bent old woman took the glasses, tremblingly, and Sally was halfway down the hall of the seventh floor before the cupola was in focus again.

As she ran she debated whether to take a chance and call from the newspaper office. The open door of a suite of legal offices flashed by. She wheeled and entered. None of the stenographers was in the outer office.

Steadying herself against a typewriter desk she snatched up the telephone:

“Wilson 2000. Hurry, please!”

She had called it two weeks ago for a news story!

In response to the hospital operator’s, “Lijah-Wilsin,” she said:

“Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior.”

The voice died away and then came back:

“Dr. Sterling’s ’phone doesn’t answer.”

“Call him on the loud speaker, please. It’s terribly important.”

She could hear the weary, raucous rasping, which was penetrating every corridor of the whole hospital:

“Docterr Ste-earling. Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-earling-Junyior....”

Every day of the month on the calendar tacked to the far wall hit her in the face ... Monday, the ninth ... Monday, the sixteenth ... before she heard Cub’s:

“Dr. Ethridge Sterling, speaking.”

“Cub ... can you come to room 708 in _The Call_ building, right away...?”

“What? ... Salscie...? Where are you? How did you...?”

A terrible calm invaded her.

“It’s me, Cub! I walked out of the hospital. I had to...! Something awful...!”

“What?” the rising concern of his voice seemed to be put on, and then his, “I can’t leave Father. He’s....”

She braced herself for a final effort and begged:

“I know. But I’m in _terrible_ ... I need you, darling!”

“But, Salscie....”

“Room 708, Cub! ...”

She threw the telephone from her and reeled into the hall and toward the vacant suite. Her eyes were right! Cub was not coming. Cub was ... was....

With a listlessness which portrayed great physical effort, she pushed the door open and looked toward the stooped back of Emma; then she swayed steadily toward a low Window sill and sat down. Her eyes were the color of clouds before a thunder storm and she leaned her head against the casing.

Then with that funny clearness which is always part of terror, she began to count the carpet tacks on both sides of two planks in the floor. One, two ... his voice was foggy and distant ... six, seven, eight ... he was irritated.... “I can’t come. I can’t come!”... Cub Sterling was a murderer ... a maniac....

As the thought began forming in her mind she revolted, and the revolt brought energy. Within half a minute after entering the room, she was at Emma’s side, begging:

“He didn’t move, did he? He didn’t move, Emma?”

“Not as I seen, but twicest I sneezed and los’ him, Miss Ferguson. But whin I got him back in, agin, he was settin’ jes th’ same and writin’ away ... liken he is....”

Sally grabbed the binoculars and twisted them painstakingly as she placed the strap over her head. If he hadn’t moved, then perhaps ... but he might have heard the loud Speaker and gone to a ’phone while Emma was sneezing ... would the loud speaker penetrate into that cupola...?

When she focused the figure again she began scrutinizing it. He had turned. Only his back and high shoulder ... but the distance from his ear to his collar wasn’t wasn’t....

Nobody but Cub had shoulders like that! Nobody except Cub sat that way....

There was only one Cub Sterling in the world and in spite of every little thing which wasn’t right this was he. And if he sat in that chair another ten minutes she would never walk and talk again ... and if he didn’t sit there but came to her....

She staggered back at that thought and Emma ran to her.

“Don’t git yourself so excited, dearie. What’s that big-headed man to you? He ain’t nuthin’ but a doctor’s helper, doin’ his regular....”

Sally kept the glasses carefully focused and said, quite calmly:

“Did you ever seen him before, Emma?”

“Not as I kin recklek. But thin I ain’t no jedge. I ain’t no crazier ’bout lookin’ at hossbittles thin I is ’bout bein’ in thim, Miss Ferguson. I tell you lots of my frin’s done gone up to thet hossbittle and ain’t never bin heard frum since. Ef a body’s goin’ to die, he’s goin’ die, hossbittle or no hossbittle, I says. Look at my boy en the Argonah! I recklek whin he got hurt in a football scrimpage, over at Western High and they tried to take him to....”

Her chatter, like water in a distant bathtub during a bad dream, splashed past Sally’s brain. Then it ceased to register, for the man at the table had risen and was opening a drawer in the medicine cabinet.

And hope sprang suddenly high in Sally’s heart. His shoulders squared and were flat! Cub stooped....

But the shape of the head and the way the hair curled at the back of the neck sickened her, horribly. It was only when he reached in a hip pocket and drew out a handkerchief ... Cub carried his in his white coat breast pocket....

Then he reached back toward the table for the hypodermic syringe, and held it up to the light again.... And his left shoulder rose ... and Sally Ferguson’s eyes floated hopelessly, the stiff tensity of her body began to relax ... she staggered forward....

Coming up the hall was the sound of running feet and they sounded like the feet of running men....

The door swung open. The note of relief in Cub Sterling’s voice as he said “Salscie!” stiffened her relaxing muscles and gave her the power to turn.

Matthew Higgins had come out of the Administration Building as the long, lank body of Cub Sterling shot into a taxi at the stand.

Higgins had jumped another cab.

Sally Ferguson turned and swayed toward Sterling as Matthew Higgins stepped inside the door and it was he who caught the incredulity, the anguish, the blind hope of her voice.

“Cub! Are you _really_ Cub?”

As Sterling reached her his voice was stern.

“What is it? You _must_ tell me,” his eyes cut into her clouding ones and Matthew Higgins stepped alongside and said curtly:

“Poison her too?”

Sally Ferguson’s lids began lowering and she gasped, holding up the glasses with her ebbing strength:

“Look, Cub! The cu-po-la!”

The words faded with her closing eyes, and the final horror in them made Cub Sterling lay her head against his chest, place his long arms under her breasts and raise the binoculars, which were still suspended around her neck.

“Lan’ sakes. It’s only a man. Jes, a doctor’s helper. And I seys....” Emma had found her voice at last, but Cub Sterling cut in:

“God Almighty! Look! And tell me what you....”

His words were directed toward Emma.

Matthew Higgins took the glasses from Cub’s hands and Sally’s neck before Cub said, “Tell me....” The expression on his face had convinced Higgins that he saw ... something ... vile.

A silence, like the high hysteria after a buoy-bell, spread over the waiting doctor. His eyes, livid with fear, turned upon the florid, gray figure of Matthew Higgins. And it was Higgins’ voice that brought Sally Ferguson out of her purple palaces. Its steadiness was more hysterical than any word that had been uttered.

“A man with his head turned away from me ... sitting at a small table writing in a book, his left shoulder is ... he is reaching for a hypodermic syringe and holding it up and.... The murderer! ... The murderer! The crazy doctor! The other Cub Sterling!”

The glasses hit the floor with a thud and Matthew Higgins started down the hallway before Cub Sterling and Sally Ferguson turned around. He must reach Snod ... reach Snod. In the same legal offices from which Sally had telephoned he grabbed the receiver and ordered:

“Elijah Wilson Hospital, immediately!”

“Number? Number? Number?”

“Give it to me. I don’t know it.”

Sally reached the doorway and sighed:

“Wilson 2000.”

When the connection was through Higgins rasped:

“Dr. Henry MacArthur.”

The nasal whine of the placid operator came back:

“Dr. MacArthur’s ’phone doesn’t answer.”

“Then give me Ward B, Medicine Clinic.”

“We never connect ‘outside’ with the wards.”

“To hell with you!” Higgins threw the ’phone from him and followed the running figure of Cub Sterling toward the elevator shaft. Sally Ferguson eased in as the door slipped to, and said to the operator:

“Will, non-stop one. For God’s sake, quick!”

Higgins’ head cleared. “Who is he?” Cub nodded vacantly.

As they ran from the building Cub Sterling jumped in beside the driver of a cruising taxi and ordered:

“Elijah Wilson. To hell with traffic lights! Five dollars if you do it in two minutes!”

Matt Higgins pulled Sally Ferguson into the back seat and slammed the door.

They began their wild, uphill snaking in and out.

Matt Higgins said:

“If we are not there in seconds, that devil will be.... Who is it, Sterling?”

Cub took his panic-stricken eyes from the approaching hospital and said:

“I don’t know, Mr. Immer....”

“Higgins. Hired by Dr. MacArthur to ... a New York dick, doc.”

Sally’s “Oh” was spontaneous.

Higgins turned and smiled.

“But it took a lady...!”

The cab drew up at the hospital. Cub Sterling was out and up the steps before the driver applied the brakes. Matt Higgins tossed him the money and he and Sally caught Cub before he was halfway up the main staircase in the Administration Building. They reached the second floor and ran around the octagonal railing, through which Sally caught a glimpse of the statue of Elijah Wilson, far below, and on to the third floor. There Cub turned, wild eyed.

“Damn it!”

“Which way?” Higgins demanded.

“I don’t know.... I’ve never been....”

Higgins began systematically opening doors and looking for an outlet. Little streams of late afternoon sun filtered through the cracks. The hospital was deathly still. All of the people off duty were preparing to go to Rose Standish’s funeral.

Sally’s hands continued wringing themselves, and she begged:

“Cub, isn’t there some way ... another stairs, Cub?”

He swirled without a word and ran down to the second floor again. Higgins and Sally followed, hopefully.

Another stairs ... behind the pharmacy ... where Rose Standish had kissed his interne ... perhaps that went up as well as down....

They reached the door that opened onto the enclosed stairway. Cub pulled the knob savagely. The door flew open. He peered into the darkness. Matthew Higgins thick body brushed him aside. The detective pushed onto the narrow landing and struck a match. Caticornered from the stairway that led down to the pharmacy, a rusty door-knob caught the reflection.

“Locked!” his discovery was like a curse.

Sally stood in the doorway that led to the second floor and moaned. Fatigue. Blinding fatigue was beginning to....

Cub Sterling moved over to Higgins’ side and said “Let’s bust it!”

They propped their feet upon the opposite wall and laid their shoulders against the flimsy panels. The match was out and the veins in their necks began choking them.

Far down below Sally heard the clanking bell of an approaching ambulance; it hid the scrunching of the wood from her ears.

She stepped onto the landing and tried to see. Before her eyes were accustomed to the dark, the heavy breathing of the two men seeped into her like a narcotic. She lay weakly against the wall.

The breathing had ceased for half a second before she opened her eyes. Through the final screech of the bulging door she heard Higgins’ voice.

“Footprints!”

He and Cub were through the hole and halfway up the narrow, winding stairway. She could see Higgins’ match ahead as she scrambled through the jagged panelling.

The steps were high and horrible. She lost all light when Higgins rounded the turn. When she staggered up, again, Higgins had his hand upon a knob and was ordering, in the heavy darkness:

“Stand over there, Sterling!” and then, “It opens out and is....”

He turned the knob, and a rush of yellow sunlight filled the twisting stairs. They pushed on into it. The last three steps extended past the cupola door and into the octagonal room.

Higgins, Cub and Sally stood upon these steps and looked.

Their gray, brown and violet eyes mirrored beside the white medicine case, a raised glass in hand, the counterpart of Cub Sterling ... gone insane.

The late afternoon sun played upon the bushy hair, upon the similar, yet dissimilar faces. It caught each feature, as it catches mountain crags and emphasized it. The same white coat, the same carriage, but not the same eyes.

It was the eyes which froze all three spectators into a paralyzed horror. They were the color of Cub Sterling’s, except that they centered upon his own eyes with a blistering, venomous, consuming hate, and that hate was confirmed in the crooked, violent twist of the almost rigid lips.

The lips opened, the man gave his left shoulder the hysterical twist and drained the glass, but even with his head thrown back, his eyes bored into and scorched the brain of Cub Sterling, and held Matthew Higgins inert with horror.

It was Sally’s, “Peaches! I smell peaches!” that brushed past their fear.

“Cyanide!”

As Cub barked the word, the tall man stiffened gauntly, his eyes still intent upon Sterling’s; then his body, like a palm tree in a hurricane, cracked suddenly forward.

The medicine cabinet was within ten feet of the steps upon which Higgins, Cub and Sally stood, and the man fell so that his head just brushed the railing. His hands automatically spread through the railing and caught Sterling’s knee.

The fall threw his hair forward and Matthew Higgins snapped:

“Who is he?”

Cub’s eyes began disentangling themselves from the glassy vileness of the dead man’s stare. Matthew Higgins reached down and savagely yanked at the stiffening hands around Cub’s knees.

Sterling, his own hands gripping the railing for support, endeavored vainly to make his reeling mind bring his tortured eyes into focus.

Matthew Higgins threw the dead man’s hand heavily back upon the floor; the body rolled half over.

Higgins rasped:

“Doctor who?”

Cub’s brain snapped. His eyes focused.

“God! Baldy! It’s Baldy!”

He lay upon the railing and carefully repeated in a dead monotone:

“Baldy Rath ... bone ... Baldy....”

“Who’s he?”

The sentence did not cut through and Higgins bellowed into Cub’s ear:

“Doctor Rathbone ... who’s he?”

It reached. Cub stood straight and clipped:

“Baldy Rathbone. Not doctor. Chief pharmacist of the Elijah Wilson. But why in God’s name! Baldy Rathbone!”

The incredulity returned. He looked again at the inert body with its eerie features.

Higgins nodded slowly....

The long hair had flopped so that the wide part again led to the shiny spot....

“The book!”

When the sentence finally reached Sally’s lips, it whipped both Sterling and Higgins into action. They ran across the room and the sun took their gray and brown heads and played upon them. Through the cob-webbed windows it shone with prismatic beauty onto the now expressionless face of the dead man.

A terrible desire to get away from that hideous beauty gave Sally the will to mount the remaining steps and run to the table and to Cub.

Through the single open window, the late spring breeze played gently. It brought a hush to the horror-stricken air and a single fly entered, flew directly to the dead man’s face and began walking upon his crooked lips, up his relaxed cheek and around his glassy eyes.

Matthew Higgins held, in his blunt hairy hand, a small stiff-backed notebook, such as the Elijah Wilson used for ward-addresses. The back was checkered and the pages ruled. It was open at a half-written page. The ink was still wet and the small, finely formed script stood out heavily.

Cub read over his shoulder:

“Cupola.... May 19th, 3:55 P. M. I have just failed to administer to
the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic, a hypodermic of
coniine. She opened her eyes suddenly and recognized me as ... Cub
Sterling! Nothing could be more fortunate.

“Beforehand I presented to Bessie Ellis my usual token. I was followed
by an orderly whom I suspect as a detective. I got away ... but at
last ... at last ... my brother may be arrested.... It has worked,
perfectly!”

“My God! Lil!” Higgins said savagely as he dropped the book onto the plain deal table.

Nobody paid him any attention.

Cub Sterling said, “‘My brother?’”

And Sally Ferguson picked up the book and began reading aloud from the first page. Her voice was thin and pointed and she read:

“In 1883 there came to Heidelberg as a medical student a young
American named Ethridge Sterling. He had studied at the Hotel Dieu and
in New York. He lived at the Eagle Inn and attended lectures in
surgery under Klotz.

“As a chambermaid at the Eagle Inn, there was a young Bavarian girl,
Gretchen Seinrich. She was fair to gaze upon and full of country
spirits.”

Cub Sterling had sat down, his head buried in his cupped hands. Matthew Higgins rested against a corner of the table. He was suddenly old. Lil Parkins ... for many years....

They both listened, vacant of expression, and at the same time horrified with interest, to Sally’s voice:

“From the spring of 1883 to the fall of 1884 young Sterling prevailed
upon Gretchen Seinrich to live with him and she did so. I like to
believe they were in love. I know she always was in love with him.

“In October 1884, Sterling was suddenly called back to New York by the
unexpected death of his father. He promised to write. He never did so.
He promised to send his address. He did not do so.

“The last night he spent in Heidelberg he spent with her. While she
was still asleep he arose and wrote the note containing all of the
above promises, and before she woke he had packed and gone....

“And I was conceived....

“She returned to Bavaria and went to work as a seamstress. After my
birth, my mother determined to come to America and find my father ...
and so she went to work at a more profitable profession ... the
oldest.”

The utter and terrible stillness of Cub Sterling was more frightful than any words would have been.

“Go on!” Matthew Higgins was relentless and Sally continued.

“It took three years to earn enough money to come to America and then
it took years of blind wandering to reach this hospital and....

“When she reached it, her great love had grown, through endless pain
and privation, to a great bitterness. She determined to reveal the
Great Dr. Sterling and ruin him, and by mistake when she asked to see
him, she was taken, instead, to his father-in-law, Dr. Jemison, and it
was through the door of Dr. Jemison’s office that she saw Ethridge
Sterling standing with his arm around Dr. Jemison’s daughter.

“She had a heart attack. Dr. Jemison pronounced her dead, and she was
carted back through the dispensary door and handed over to a German
Society for burial. The president of the society was Otto Weber. He
burned her papers and I, then nine, was put into an orphan asylum.

“My father was already famous. He was Otto’s best customer. But what
we learn in the first eight years of our lives ... if it is bitter ...
we never forget....

“At the asylum we had candy at Christmas and mush for breakfast, and
the Elijah Wilson operated upon us, free, when necessary. I remember
quite vividly when I was operated upon. Double hernia, and endless
pain, and a dispensary consultation. Dr. Sterling was designated to do
the operation.

“Upon the day slated, his son was born and my case was turned over to
an assistant resident. A man killed in the War....”

“Fegus,” Cub’s voice was low.

“The doctor had never done the operation before. I was his first ...
the incisions were too deep.

“I lost my mother before I really knew her and my manhood before it
began....

“I lost both of them because my father was Dr. Ethridge Sterling, of
the famous hands.