“I’ll see about it in the morning,” I replied, quite at random. She retreated, eyeing me with trepidation, and later I saw her whispering with the student nurse in the drug room and both of them regarding me distrustfully.
Somehow the seconds dragged along. I took up my post at the chart desk, turning the chair so that it faced the long length of empty, dark corridor, and the dark space above Eighteen was visible to me.
Maida stopped at the desk now and then, and once paused to survey me curiously.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Sarah?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I replied, looking for the thousandth time at my watch. It was then a quarter of two.
She studied me oddly for a moment.
“What a night! The wind and rain is getting awfully on my nerves.” She unpinned her thermometer, took off the cap and held it closer to her eyes. “I was taking a temperature a moment ago when that loud crack of thunder came and it startled me so that I dropped the thermometer. I don’t think”—she paused to squint interestedly along the small glass tube—“I don’t think I broke it. For heaven’s sake, Sarah!” she broke off in sudden irritation. “Stop staring down the corridor. You make me edgy. What are you looking for? What do you——”
I did not hear the rest of the sentence. I sprang to my feet, peering through the semi-darkness to be sure my eyes had not mistaken me.
They had not!
Gleaming above the door of Eighteen was a single, small red light!