“Yes, I saw that this morning,” said a quiet voice beside me. It was Lance O’Leary; I did not know he was near until he spoke. “Our friend Mr. Gainsay seems to be a little confused as to his dates.”

I daresay my eyes reflected a question for he added, leisurely:

“He told me that he intended to sail on the Tuscania next week. I see that he told you the same thing. He is not a very discreet young man, else he’d have known that I should look up the Tuscania’s sailing date without delay.”

I sighed; all those unpleasant little doubts of Jim Gainsay were returning in full force.

“If he has the radium, it is not in his room in the Letheny cottage,” said O’Leary meditatively.

“How do you know?” I inquired stupidly.

“We have searched the rooms and personal belongings of each of those present at that dinner party last Thursday night.”

“What!”

“In fact, I daresay that there is not a room in the whole of St. Ann’s, as well as in the Letheny cottage, that has not been thoroughly ransacked.”

I ran my tongue over dry lips. This was getting down to work with a vengeance.

“Why?” I stammered.

There was a glimmer of impatience in his eyes.

“For the radium, of course. Surely you did not think we were going to let it get away from us without a struggle.”

There was a moment or two of silence during which I studied the polished glass surface of the desk before me without seeing it.

“Did you ask Huldah about Miss Letheny’s errand through the rain last Friday afternoon?” inquired O’Leary after a contemplative pause.

“Yes.” I told him in a few words the little that Huldah had told me. “And there is something else I have discovered,” I went on miserably. “I’ve got to tell you, though I must say I do not want to do so. It is⁠—that morphine. The morphine that killed Mr. Jackson, you know. I⁠—I know where it came from!”

“You⁠—what!” O’Leary was for once startled out of his usual composure.

“I know where it came from,” I repeated reluctantly. “At least, I think that I do. You see⁠—there is morphine missing from our south wing drug supply.”

I had to tell him the whole thing, of course, under his searching questions and no less searching gaze, and even explain our system of keeping account of the drugs. He had to see the drug room and the charts and the records for himself. It was while I was showing him the drawer in which the morphine was kept, that I made my regrettable slip about the hypodermic syringe.

I had started to show him how the needles were fitted into the small mechanism, and I reached for a hypodermic syringe. It turned out to be my own.

“This one is mine,” I said thoughtlessly, fitting the slim, hollow needle into the tiny instrument. “The other one that we were using disapp⁠—” I stopped so suddenly that my breath came out in an explosive little pop and O’Leary’s face hardened slightly. It was an expression that I was growing to recognize.

“You may as well finish. So the other one ‘disapp’-eared, did it? When and how? Whose was it? There is still one in the drawer. What about the one that disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” I said flatly. “Then, you see, we take the sterile water and measure the liquid into⁠—”

O’Leary looked at his watch.

“I haven’t much time,” he said pleasantly. “But I have enough time to wait right here until you tell me about the hypodermic syringe that disappeared. Or if necessary I can dog your footsteps the rest of the night, reiterating my question at frequent and embarrassing intervals. Of course, I can have the whole hospital searched extensively and every hypodermic needle accounted for, especially if missing. I can follow you to your meal⁠—isn’t that the bell?⁠—and keep on asking you.” He added meditatively: “I suppose it might cause considerable interest among the other nurses.”

I regarded him furiously. The thing was that he would be quite capable of doing just that. I began to understand the force of the words of the chief of police when he had said⁠—“Once Lance O’Leary gets his teeth into anything, it is as good as done.”

“I suppose you’ll have to know sometime, anyway,” I said sulkily.

The flicker in his gray eyes was like a ripple across a very calm, deep lake.

“You are right, Miss Keate. So why not tell me now?”

Well, to make a long story short, I told him of the missing hypodermic, which after all, was little enough: barely the fact that Maida’s syringe had been removed and my own substituted, but this without my knowledge. And that Maida had had the opportunity to take my own, and if she had wished to use it, all that she needed to do was ask me for it.

“Which she conspicuously did not do,” commented O’Leary. “Oh, by the way, Miss Keate, have you ever attended an inquest?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t get bothered. Our coroner is a decent old fellow but he does love to be pompous. Just answer what he asks, tell your story as briefly as possible and don’t⁠—er⁠—volunteer anything. You see there are some things that you and I know that will not come up at the inquest.”

“You mean⁠—they would warn the guilty one?”

He nodded briefly as he turned away.

Maida was already in the south wing when I rounded the right angle of the corridor leading from the main office, at exactly twelve o’clock that night.

“I locked the south door,” she said, hanging the key on its customary nail above the desk.

“That was right,” I approved, glancing over the charts. It appeared that Eleven’s digestive apparatus was still doing business at the old stand, so to speak, but otherwise all was well and I settled briskly into the business of second watch.

Midnight temperatures had scarcely been taken, however, when Olma Flynn developed a sick headache, worse when I was within hearing distance, and had to be excused from duty. We didn’t actually need the extra help, as Maida and I had been accustomed to care for the whole wing ourselves, but nevertheless it was a little annoying, especially as, about two o’clock, the little student nurse burned her wrist over the gas flame in the diet kitchen, and the burn had to be salved extensively and the nurse sent to bed with an aspirin tablet.

Thus Maida and I found ourselves alone in the south wing for the first time since those terrifying events of Thursday night. This precarious situation was a matter that was, I think, predominant in our thoughts but neither of us mentioned it; we even manufactured an artificial sort of⁠—not gaiety, that would be asking too much⁠—but of brisk attention to work and a determined avoidance of conversation that might lead back to things we were anxious to forget.

All went well, in spite of our hidden fears, until about three o’clock. I was pouring out a small dose of bromide for Three, who had made up her mind not to sleep that night and naturally was not doing so, when Maida opened the door of the drug room.

Her face was so ghastly white that at first glimpse of it my hand began to tremble and the medicine poured all over the spoon. Blindly I set the bottle down.

“What is it?”

“There’s something in Room 18!” she gasped through ashy lips.

“Room 18!”

“Just now⁠—I saw something go into that room from the corridor!”

“Someone⁠—is sleepwalking.” I grasped at the first rationality that presented itself.

After the light in the diet kitchen the long corridor seemed peculiarly dark and shadowy and the green light over the chart desk was miles away. It never occurred to me to call for help, and we sped along toward that dark end of the wing that we had good cause to fear.

But we stopped stock still as we came close enough to see the door of Room 18, and a cold shiver crept up from my back.

The door of Room 18 was standing wide open!

It had not been opened, so far as I knew, since the police had left that room. It had been shunned by all the nurses. Who had opened it? Who would dare open it?

Who was inside that dark place?

A long, shuddering sigh came from Maida beside me and I felt her cold hand grip my wrist. The contact nerved me and I did what, I afterward realized, was a very foolish thing.

I took a few steps forward, advanced to the very door of that grisly room, reached a shaking arm through the open doorway, groped for the electric-light button, found and pressed it.

The cold white dome on the ceiling flooded the room with light.

There was nothing out of the way to be seen. There were the plain dresser, the bedside table, two chairs, the folded burlap screen and the high, narrow bed⁠—nothing else. Something caught in my throat as I glanced at the bed and toward the closet doors.

“The⁠—closet⁠—” breathed Maida at my side. “Oh! You are not going to open that!” as I took a more decisive step forward.

It was no easy thing to do, for I knew well that those shallow closets were yet large enough to hold⁠—what one of them had held.

They were both unlocked this time. And there was nothing in them!

I turned to Maida, whose white face had been beside me during the ordeal. Without saying a word we retreated to the corridor.

“Are you sure you saw something?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“I am positive,” whispered Maida. “You see, I was just answering Fourteen’s light, which brought me fairly near to Eighteen. I came out the door and was starting down toward the chart desk when something⁠—I don’t know what⁠—some rustle or sound, perhaps, made me turn around, facing this way, so I could see the south door. And I was just in time to see a sort of movement at the door of Eighteen.” Her hands went to her throat as she spoke and I did not feel very comfortable myself.

“It couldn’t have been one of the patients?” I murmured.

“No! There isn’t a one of them who is able to walk.”

“Then who⁠—”

“Or⁠—what⁠—” said Maida.

A remnant of common sense saved me, I think, from stark terror. I took a firmer hold on my imagination.

“Nonsense,” I spoke decidedly but still, for some reason, in a whisper. “There are no such things as⁠—as⁠—I mean to say, the shadow you saw was either an optical illusion or a living, breathing person.”

“Certainly,” agreed Maida, adding inconsistently: “I don’t see how a living person could have got past us, through this long corridor without one of us seeing him⁠—it.”

My eyes fell on the south door near at hand; the tiny panes of glass winked blackly at me as I crossed to it, grasped the brass latch and pulled. The door swung slowly open, letting in a current of cold, mist-laden air.

“There, you see?” I said to Maida. “Only a real, material thing needs a door to go through.”

Maida was looking at me strangely.

“I don’t see that that helps matters any,” she said. “I locked that door myself, tonight. It just proves that someone was actually here. That the murderer is still about the hospital.”

“Not necessarily,” I said, though my heart was pounding in my throat. “You are sure you locked it?”

“Positive.”

“And you hung the key there on the nail above the chart desk?”

“Yes.”

We both swung hastily around. At the other end of the shadowy corridor gleamed the green-shaded light over the desk. With one accord we started toward it.

The key was not on the nail above the desk!

But even as our frightened gaze took in that amazing fact my eyes fell on the glass top of the desk. There on its shining surface lay the key. We stared at it for some time before our eyes met. Then I picked up the key, my fingers seeming to shrink from the cold, clammy metal, returned to the south door, locked it securely and put the key in my pocket.

And as I did so, a thought struck me. The person who had got into the wing by means of the south door must also have got out again. He couldn’t have gone through the corridor and south door for Maida was, by that time, in the hall.

The light was still glowing in Room 18, and I crossed the room, not without a queer feeling in the region of my knees, as if they would give way with me, without notice. Sure enough, the window was unlocked; it was even open a fraction of an inch at the bottom, though the screen, which has a spring snap, was closed.

I pushed the window the rest of the way down, locked it, not without an unpleasant impression that something was out in that gleaming darkness back of the window pane watching my every move, turned off the light, and closed the door again. Maida was standing in the corridor and we walked slowly toward the more cheerful region of the chart desk and diet kitchen.

“I suppose,” she mused at length, “that someone could have taken the key from the nail and returned it when we were in Room 18.”

“But who? It would have to be someone in St. Ann’s. And that is unthinkable.”

“There are likely ways in and out of St. Ann’s,” she said finally, and with that a signal clicked somewhere. I recalled Three who would be in a tantrum by this time, and we separated.

We were very busy for the rest of the night, and dawn was never so welcome a sight. But during those slow hours I came to the conclusion that there were only two things we knew without doubt. The key to the south door had been removed from the nail and left on top of the chart desk, and the sinister door of Room 18 had been opened and left open.

Who had done this and why was a matter of conjecture, and I resolved to say nothing of it save to Lance O’Leary. I should leave it to O’Leary.

Leave it to O’Leary! I had so far recovered from my fright that I smiled faintly at the phrase, but I could have embraced the day nurses when they came on duty, and the rattle of the dishes in the small, rubber-tired dumbwaiter, as it came up with the breakfast trays, sounded like music to my ears.

On the way to the basement for breakfast, I had time for a word or two with Maida.

“We’ll say nothing about it, save to O’Leary,” I murmured in a low voice and she nodded, just as Miss Dotty joined us with one of her insufferably bright good mornings.

Miss Dotty keeps a book at her bedside, entitled Every Day a Sunny Day, and memorizes verses from it. Her verse that morning was:

If you’re lonely, sad and blue,
Keep smiling.
Luck will bring you someone true
Who understands and loves just you.
Keep smiling,

which seemed not only inane but downright offensive, as coming from one old maid to another.

The inquest was set for nine thirty. We had an early operation and at eight o’clock prompt I was tying Dr. Balman into his white apron and hood and counting sponges in the operating room. The patient’s appendix proving to be elusive, turning up, in fact, on entirely the wrong side, the operation was more interesting than we had expected. Dr. Balman looked haggard from fatigue and worry, his thin hair and beard were dishevelled and his eyes were hollow, but his hands were steady, if rather slow, and every last detail was thoroughly attended to.

The inquest was held in the nurses’ library in the basement. It is not a cheerful room, particularly on wet, rainy mornings. It was chilly in the place; the whitewashed walls looked cold and bare, even the medical books along the walls had none too happy titles. The linoleum rug caught dismal highlights, the chairs borrowed from the dining room were slippery and uncomfortable, and moisture dripped steadily down the small windows. Someone had turned on the lights but they did not improve matters.

At a little table sat a stout, elderly gentleman, whom I had no trouble identifying as the pompous coroner. He wore a pair of nose-glasses attached to a button on his broad vest with an important black ribbon. The board of directors were ranged near at hand, some of them constituting the jury, which would have surprised me had I not known the weight in politics and otherwise that some of those names carried.

Corole Letheny was there in a soft brown frock daringly tailored and very short so that her silk-clad⁠—er⁠—ankles and so forth were much in evidence; she wore a small green hat pulled low over her eyes and carried a large and gorgeously beaded bag which made a spot of vivid colour in that neutral gray room. Huldah, very stiff in her Sunday black silk, sat beside her.

A little way off among a group of nurses sat Maida, her beauty and the distinctive air of breeding in the very lift of her chin making her stand out from the others as if they were only the frame for a picture. Jim Gainsay stood at the back of the room with a group of reporters. He wore an air of ease that was a shade too deliberate; his impenetrable eyes looked at nothing in particular but, I had no doubt, missed not the smallest movement in the room. He was attractive, clean, young, vigorous, but I could have wished him less restrained⁠—less poised⁠—less wary.

There were the staff doctors, of course, talking to Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek. I was interested to note that a bit of Dr. Hajek’s ruddy colour had deserted him; he said little and his black eyes darted here and there about the room, occasionally lingering upon Corole. Save for those restless eyes he was as unmoved and stolid as was usual with him.

There were several policemen, too, Higgins, the cook and a few curious student nurses sitting with Miss Dotty, who being something of a simpleton took that occasion to shed a few tears, presumably for Dr. Letheny. And there was O’Leary, of course, gray and quiet, sitting near the coroner’s table.

It being the one and only inquest I had ever attended (for which I am truly thankful), I was not able to compare it with others and did not know whether the undercurrent of excitement, the low whispers, the white faces, the nervous little movements and darting glances here and there, are typical of all inquests or peculiar to that one.

All at once the coroner put down the papers he had been studying, took off his nose glasses, and began to talk. I did not notice what he said, for at the same moment O’Leary rose quietly and moved toward the back of the room. As he passed me he dropped a small bit of folded paper in my lap. Under the cover of my wide cuff I read the brief message it contained. I read it again; it didn’t seem to make sense, but of course, I was willing to obey the terse request. Just as I slipped the paper into my pocket I heard my name being called and I rose and walked to a chair indicated by the coroner.

After convincing the coroner and the jury that I was actually Sarah Keate, superintendent of the south wing and on duty the night of Thursday, June seventh, I was allowed to proceed.

It was not so difficult as I had feared it would be; I was allowed to tell my story in a brief and straightforward manner. The only time I became confused was when I got to the incident of the arrow-like projectile that had whizzed over my shoulder while I stood for a moment there on the little south porch. It was then, for the first time since the night it occurred, that I recalled the trifling incident, and I was already launched upon it and could not head off the coroner’s questions. I caught a reproachful look from O’Leary but had to continue; however, the coroner’s questions could prove nothing for there was little I could tell of the matter.

The coroner questioned me rather particularly, too, as to the man with whom I collided, but I had expected this and gave guarded replies. He also tried to make me identify the owner of the cigarette case which lay there on the table before him, but I refused to commit myself beyond telling how and when I found the thing.

As I say, it was not difficult⁠—that is, until I reached the actual events leading to the crime. It was then that my voice faltered.

“It was while I was sitting there at the chart desk, at exactly one thirty⁠—I had just entered the time on a chart⁠—that I heard a sort of⁠—bang. It sounded like a door closing.” I went on speaking with more and more difficulty. “So I got up and walked along the corridor but the south door was still open. Then I went back to the chart desk and was there when the storm broke and I had to run to close the door and the windows. When I went into Room 18 to close the window I found⁠—” I stuck and had to clear my throat.⁠—“I found that the patient, Mr. Jackson, was dead. The lights had gone out but a flash of lightning lit the room and I felt for his pulse and knew that he was dead. I ran to the diet kitchen, found a candle, and ran back to Eighteen. Miss Day had been closing the windows in the wing and had just got to Room 18 when I returned with the candle. It was after we knew we could do nothing for him that we found the radium had been stolen.”

My testimony continued for some time after that, but I simply answered the coroner’s questions as briefly as possible and volunteered nothing, and presently resumed my seat, feeling that, with the one exception, I had conducted myself creditably.

Then Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek were called in turn, to testify as to the causes of death, first of Mr. Jackson’s, and later of Dr. Letheny’s. They used technical terms, and told the methods of determining the length of time each had been dead before discovery. It was a difficult half hour for both of them, knowing Dr. Letheny as they had, and they both looked quite exhausted when the coroner had finished with them. Dr. Balman was frankly mopping his high forehead and even Dr. Hajek’s stolidity was shaken, for his eyes darted nervously about him and he retreated to the back of the room, where he lit a cigarette with unsteady hands.

Then Miss Maida Day was called and as she took the witness chair my hands gripped each other and I watched her with strained attention.

She testified very coolly, though. No, she had not seen Dr. Letheny when he called to visit his patient at twelve thirty. She had been busy in one of the sick rooms. Yes, she had stepped out on the porch for a breath of air. Yes, she had attended the dinner party given by Miss Letheny. The coroner seemed to be supplied with all the topics of conversation of that dinner and Maida agreed imperviously to every one of them, even to the fact that she had said she wanted money.

“I believe your words were ‘I’d give my very soul for money’?” inquired the coroner nastily.

“I think I did say something like that,” said Maida quietly, though a tiny flush mounted to her cheeks. “Of course, I didn’t mean exactly that. One often exaggerates one’s statements.”

The coroner did not comment on that but looked expressively at the jury.

Then she corroborated, under his questions, every detail I had told of our finding of the body of Mr. Jackson and of our subsequent actions. He made his questions very searching and important indeed, and I felt something between a fool and a liar during the process; I am not accustomed to having my word doubted.

“Miss Letheny answered the telephone, when I called for the doctor,” Maida explained, “and said that she couldn’t rouse him, and when I said we must have him immediately she went away from the telephone and when she came back told me that he was not in the house and she didn’t know where he had gone.”

“Then you telephoned to Dr. Balman?”

“Yes.”

“Did he answer immediately?”

“No. I think he must have been asleep. When he did answer I told him simply of Mr. Jackson’s unexpected death and that we could not locate Dr. Letheny.”

“About how long was it until Dr. Balman arrived?”

“I’m not sure. I was⁠—agitated naturally. But I should say about fifteen minutes.”

“How was he dressed when he arrived?”

“In⁠—a dinner jacket, I think⁠—and slicker. It was raining, you know.”

“Miss Day, have you lately lost a cuff link?” asked the coroner, without warning.

I was watching Maida closely and saw the little flush that had been in her face drain steadily away; her eyes darkened but did not falter in their steadfast gaze.

“Yes,” she replied quietly.

“Is this it?” He placed a small object in her hand that I could not see but had no doubt was the square of lapis.

“It⁠—seems to be,” she said, after a pause during which we others scarcely breathed. “It resembles the one I lost.”

“Do you think you can say that it is your cuff link?” asked the coroner smoothly.

“Why⁠—yes. At least, it is identical with mine.”

“Can you explain its presence in Dr. Letheny’s coat pocket when he was found⁠—dead?”

“No,” said Maida steadily, her steel-blue eyes meeting the coroner’s directly.

“When did you discover its loss?”

If possible, Maida went still whiter, and her nostrils took on a pinched look.

“Shortly after I had returned from the porch,” she said steadily enough, but her eyes went to the back of the room for a brief instant.

“How did this get into Dr. Letheny’s possession?” persisted the coroner.

“I do not know. I suppose I⁠—dropped it. Lost it from my cuff, and Dr. Letheny must have⁠—found it.”

“In the dark?” inquired the coroner suavely.

Maida flushed again but her chin went higher.

“I do not know.”

He continued to question her at some length but with no success, and finally he dismissed her, with a grudging “Thank you.”

Corole Letheny was the next witness and I settled myself more comfortably in my chair to listen. She was extremely self-possessed, and sat down as gracefully as if she had been paying a call. She looked rather nice, or would have, but for the clear beauty of the face that had just preceded her. Maida’s immaculate uniform, her clear white skin, her amazing blue eyes under their straight black eyebrows, that little, aristocratic air which somehow always surrounded her, made Corole seem a little tarnished, a little tawdry, a little theatrical, in spite of her perfect grooming and her expensive clothing.

By that time the repetition of the details of that oft-referred-to dinner party were growing stale and I did not pay the strictest attention to the first questions of the coroner. I was aroused, though, by hearing him say suavely:

“You will pardon me, Miss Letheny, but were you and Dr. Letheny on the best of terms?”

She stared at him, her yellowish eyes widening and reflecting green lights from her hat brim.

“What do you mean?”

“Following the departure of your guests that night, did you not have a heated disagreement?”

Her eyes slowly left the coroner and went to Huldah in an exceedingly unpleasant gaze.

“I suppose my maid told you that. Yes, we did quarrel. Louis⁠—was not an easy man to get along with.”

“What was the subject of your quarrel that night?”

“About as usual. Nothing in particular.”

“Can you recall any of the exact⁠—er⁠—subjects?”

“Why⁠—no,” said Corole slowly. “That is, he told me I was running the house too extravagantly. He always said that.”

The coroner surveyed her for a moment or two.

“Is this your revolver?” he said suddenly, reaching for the shiny revolver and holding it before her.

She started, quite visibly. One brown hand, with a great topaz shining on it, reached out as if to clutch the thing, and then drew slowly back.