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!”