“No visitors,” he agreed.
“And in the meantime,” said Dr. Balman, “business as usual. Eh, Miss Keate?”
“By all means. But Dr. Balman—you don’t think that Dr. Letheny killed Mr. Jackson and got away with the radium——”
“Certainly not,” said Dr. Balman. “There is nothing upon which to base such a conclusion.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” muttered Chief Blunt from the depths of the telephone transmitter.
It took a few moments for Dr. Balman and Dr. Hajek to arrange between them to take over Dr. Letheny’s work in case, we were careful to say, Dr. Letheny did not come to St. Ann’s that day, while Chief Blunt put the telephone to such good use that at the end of a few minutes he assured us that Dr. Letheny would be found within twenty-four hours. This I thought to be a somewhat sweeping prophecy but said nothing.
Leaving the office, I walked thoughtfully down to the south wing. It was a compliment to St. Ann’s routine that, with the exception of a certain nervousness on the part of the nurses, all was quite as it should be. Morning baths had been given, breakfasts were all over and rooms dusted, and discipline in general had been maintained. However, there is no use saying things were just as usual for they were not. It was dark and cold that morning, with one of those quick changes of temperature for which our part of the country is famous. The electric service had not yet been repaired and there were lamps at intervals along the corridor. Miss Dotty, wisely for once, had doubled the number of girls on duty, and blue-striped skirts and white aprons of training nurses, as well as the severe white of graduate nurses, glimmered everywhere.
So far we had been successful in keeping the news of the murder from the ears of the patients, but of course they were aware of some kind of disturbance during the night, and several of them were quite fussy and upset and demanded to be moved to another wing, which naturally we could not do. We kept the newspapers from them, too, but one of the minor troubles of the day was the continual telephone calls from anxious relatives, which began as soon as the morning extras were out.
Oh, yes, the newspapers got out extras with all kinds of pictures and the most absurd statements that made St. Ann’s appear to be something between a boarding school and a den of iniquity. This unfortunate impression was helped by the pictures of nurses in conjunction with the murder and radium theft.
And in spite of our efforts to carry on work the same as usual, in spite of cleaned rooms and spick-and-span corridors and careful charts, there lingered, somehow, pervading the very old walls of St. Ann’s, a certain gloom, a sense of foreboding, that centred in the south wing.