Dodge followed the sergeant to a bathroom, there to undress and bathe. When he had finished he was handed some pajamas.
"Where is my regular clothing?" asked Dodge of the private who gave him the pajamas.
"Sergeant Eberlee locked them up in a locker, sir, until you're discharged."
Bert Dodge, in a furious temper, followed the private to the bed assigned to him. His clothing locked up! That clothing had figured largely in his plan in coming to the hospital.
"Now I have played the fool!" thought the cadet. "I'd planned to get out on the sly tonight, while in here officially. Now I can't get out except in pajamas in which I'd be spotted before I'd gone ten feet! Hang the fool regulations of this hospital!"
All day Dodge lay fuming. Lieutenant Doctor Herman visited him twice, still unwilling to say nothing was wrong. For one thing, Bert was so angry that he could not eat, and that in itself is unusual in a healthy cadet who lives a very strenuous life. Anger also gave him a flushed face and an exceptional look about the eyes. Yet, there was nothing apparent to make a physician believe there was anything serious the matter.
Bert had the ward to himself, being the only patient in the building. It was eight o'clock when a man in the uniform of the hospital corps came in to turn the lights low.
"Benton!" exclaimed Dodge. "What brings you here?"
"Is that you, Mr. Dodge?" asked Private Benton, approaching Bert's bed. "I'm sorry to see you sick, sir."
"I'm not sick, Benton. But, again, what are you doing here?" Benton was an enlisted man who, for pay, had been accustomed to serving Dodge more or less surreptitiously.