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.”