“You aren’t looking well, Dr. Balman,” I said. “You should have that bruise attended to.” And I thought, though I did not say it, that he would profit by some liver pills.
“I haven’t had time——” he began; a nurse rattling up to us in her crisp skirts interrupted him with a question and I went on downstairs.
A letter was waiting for me on the rack in the hall. I did not recognize the handwriting, which was square and distinct and very painstaking; the signature, however, caught my attention and I ran through the note hastily, read it again more carefully, and with an involuntary glance about me I withdrew into a secluded corner of the hall and read it once more. It was short and to the point.
Dear Miss:
I think it is my dooty to tell you somthing I heerd. It is about Mr. Gansie I liked him but he is croked. He thinks Miss C whuz name I will not menshun has the radeyum, she said you know more than you will tell about those murders too and he said well what if I do what I want is the radeyum. Then she said youd better get out of here before you land in jail and he said speak for yourself. Then the kitchen door blew shut. You can tell that little man with the gray eyes if you want to.
That Gansie is a bad man he has a revolver in his pocket.
I have left Miss C for good.
Yours respectfully,
Huldah Hansinge.
Aside from reading “croked” to be “croaked” and thinking for a wild second that she was announcing Gainsay’s death, I had no difficulty in understanding Huldah’s amazing epistle. It sounded exactly like her, and Huldah is honest, so I did not even have the dubious satisfaction of doubting her word. It was my duty, too, to turn the thing over to O’Leary, and I should have done so at once had I been able to find him. But he was not to be found and I finally went down to lunch with a heavier heart.
The afternoon passed as slowly as the morning. O’Leary stayed out of sight, I heard no news about Corole or the radium, and the note from Huldah was simply burning a hole in my pocket. I tried telephoning to O’Leary but could not even get an answer from his servant. It was while I was in the general office that someone telephoned for Dr. Hajek. Miss Jones was at the telephone and asked me to call him, saying he was in the south wing.
“It’s a woman,” she said, winking at me. “She wouldn’t give her name or number.”
I found Dr. Hajek in Room 17 changing a dressing. He dropped his forceps and pulled off his rubber gloves so hastily that they split across one palm.
“Pick up those forceps and sterilize them,” he directed the attendant nurse. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
I suppose he noted the disapproval in my face, for as we left he murmured something about having expected an important call and Seventeen being all right until he returned. In the corridor, tipped back against the door of Eighteen, lounged a policeman. Dr. Hajek regarded him speculatively but said nothing concerning his presence, which was, to my mind, an extraordinarily stupid arrangement. It seemed far better, to me, to remove the radium under guard to a place of safe-keeping, but O’Leary’s business was O’Leary’s.