“Sure.” The cook was immediately interested. “Sure. Walking down toward the apple orchard, they was. Do you want to see Higgins, Miss Keate?”
“Oh, it was of no importance,” I said, and somewhat disconsolately departed.
12. Room 18 Again
Still feeling that I must get hold of Higgins, it was hard to compose myself to rest and I didn’t sleep a wink. About eleven o’clock I got up and made my way again to the basement. It was dark and spooky and very empty down there and after knocking at Higgins’s door a few times and feeling, while I waited for the reply that did not come, as if all the ghosts in Christendom were prowling in the furnace room and thereabouts, I retreated precipitously to my own room. I was sure that Higgins was in his room, for where else would he be at that hour? But the surroundings were not those to encourage persistence on my part. The unused corridors are very desolate at that hour and those of the sick-room wings little less so.
I was still wide awake when the twelve o’clock gong sounded.
By that time I was convinced that Higgins was deliberately keeping out of my way and that in itself made me the more anxious to get in touch with O’Leary. I stopped at the general office as I passed it on my way to the south wing, and telephoned again.
The same servant answered my ring, sleepily at first, but he awoke in a hurry when I told him that it was Miss Keate at St. Ann’s and that I must speak to Mr. O’Leary at once.
“You might try the police station,” he said guardedly. “I think he was investigating some telegraph messages that just came in.”
So I looked up the number in the telephone book and tried it. But though I tried and tried, the line was busy and kept busy and I had to give up in order to be on time at the south wing.
Olma Flynn was waiting for me and Maida already busy about twelve-o’clock temperatures.