The Patient in Room 18

St. Ann’s is an old hospital, sprawling in a great heap of weather-stained red brick and green ivy on the side of Thatcher Hill, a little east and south of the city of B⁠⸺. The building, though remodelled and added on to here and there, still retains the great, solid walls, the gumwood and walnut woodwork, the large, old-fashioned rooms, and the general air of magnificence and dignity that characterized what was known, in the grandiloquent nineties, as the Thatcher mansion.

Time has made changes; quantities of windows, low and wide, modern plumbing, electricity, a telephone to every floor, and added wings whose brick walls have been carefully weather-stained to match the original walls are some of them. On the west is the main entrance, an imposing affair of massive doors and great travertine pillars and curving driveway. But on the south, at the extreme end of the south wing, is another and less imposing entrance, a small, semicircular, colonial porch and a glass-paned door that leads from the hushed hospital corridor directly upon a narrow strip of grass and then shrubbery and apple orchard and willows and thickets of firs. From this door, too, is a path leading up and around the hill, and, considerably below and beyond the thickets of trees and brush, winds a road, dusty and seldom used.

I ran the whole length of the corridor. The wind was sweeping along it with such fury that my skirts were pulled back tight around me, my cap slipped back on my head, and several top-heavy vases of flowers must have blown over for we found them so later. With some difficulty I closed the door. As I fastened it, leaving the key in the lock in my haste, I could see through the panes of glass the first great spatters of rain, and down below the hospital on the little back road shone the lights of a hurrying automobile. Then they were gone and another flash of lightning nearly blinded me and there was a sharp crackle and sputter. Simultaneously the light went out as if by black magic, leaving me alone in the dark with eighteen windows to get down and eighteen patients to reassure.

I knew in an instant what had occurred; the power line from the city had been struck and the fuses burnt out or some such matter. Where was Maida? The rain was coming in torrents by the time I had felt my way into Room 17 and closed the window. Occasional lightning aided me as I groped my way to Room 18, crossed it and pulled down that window.

“Oh, yes.” He studied me for a moment as if to see how far the discretion with which he had complimented me might be trusted. Then he drew something from his pocket⁠—something so small that it was hidden in his hand until he held it toward me.

And when I looked, I cried out and shrank back, my heart leaping to my throat. There on his outstretched palm lay a small cuff link; it was a neat square of lapis lazuli, set in engraved white gold.

“I see that you recognize it?”

Speechlessly, I made a motion of assent.

“You need not tell me that it is Miss Day’s. I already know that. One or two of the nurses recognized it as I left it casually on the table in the general office. Oh, I watched it carefully⁠—I suppose they thought she had lost it. They did not know where it was found.”

“Where it was found⁠—” I repeated, huskily, my voice losing itself somewhere in my throat.

“It was found⁠—in Dr. Letheny’s pocket.” He spoke very deliberately, his clear, gray eyes searching mine. Then he turned. “Good night, Miss Keate,” he said courteously and was gone.

The patient in Eighteen finally turned off his light and must have gone to sleep, for we heard nothing of him for an hour or two. We were fairly busy, with little opportunity for conversation. Along about two o’clock I found that Sonny had managed to acquire a sore throat, a hot, flushed face and icy feet. I was hurrying for camphorated oil and a hot-water bottle when Eighteen’s light shone redly above the door. I hastened to answer it.

“Nurse,” said our patient firmly, his eyes quite swollen from lack of sleep, and his bedclothes more tousled than ever. “Nurse, I do not like this room. I want another.”

I sighed inwardly even as I went again about the business of straightening him and the bed.

“There isn’t another on the floor, Mr. Gastin,” I said quietly. “And anyway we can’t move you in the middle of the night.”

“But I insist upon being moved,” he said, with an odd mixture of childish pettishness and adult command. What would be the result if the world at large knew these important business men as we know them! Big babies, they are, most of them!

“This room is exactly like any other room,” I said.

“I don’t like it!” he reiterated. “There’s⁠—there’s noises.” His eyes roved about the room uneasily. “There’s noises! Sounds like whispering.”

I’ll not deny that these extraordinary words stirred my hair at its roots.

“Non⁠—sense!” I brought out jerkily. “Nonsense! You are nervous.”

He was regarding me with shrewd little eyes. I stared back at him, trying to appear steady and at ease, but it was no use. He raised his hand to point a square forefinger at me, shaking it emphatically in my face.

The receiver clicked, I hung up my own softly, straightened my cap and walked back to the south wing. Maida was not to be seen. I sat down at the desk and found that in my haste to get to the telephone I had upset the red ink I was in the act of using. It was meandering gayly across the desk, reddening everything it touched, and I seized some trash out of the waste basket for a blotter. It was while I was mopping up the ink that all at once, without even a warning flicker, the light above the desk went out, leaving me in total darkness. It was so unexpected that I gasped and cried out.

Then I turned as if to look down the corridor, but nothing but a close black curtain met my eyes. There was not a gleam of light. Every signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet. I was suspended in a breathless black void.

And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been violently done to death!

My breath began to come in painful, rasping gasps. I must do something. I must find Maida. I must get a lamp. Must make my way to the basement switch-box and replace a burned-out fuse⁠—or find what had caused the trouble.