Room 18 was closed and guarded by a stalwart policeman, who sat uncompromisingly in front of the door, but that end of the corridor was shunned as if there were live smallpox there, and when one of the nurses had to go to Room 17, opposite, or to the next room, Sixteen, she quite frankly sought the company of another nurse.
Old Mr. Jackson’s lawyer had been notified immediately of the tragedy, I learned, and he, in turn, had notified the dead man’s only relatives, a cousin and a nephew, living somewhere in the East. Along in the middle of the morning a rather impersonal telegram came from them to Chief Blunt, bidding him spare no expense and keep them informed of developments.
What with one thing and another I had very little time of my own until about two o’clock in the afternoon when, after firmly getting rid of Miss Dotty, who evidenced a distressing disposition to cling and whisper in horrified italics, I sat down at the south-wing chart desk, drew a blank chart toward me, and presenting as forbidding a back against interruption as I could, I tried to think. Until that moment the whirl of events had so caught me that I had had to act and had had literally no time in which to consider the matter.
I began, logically enough, at twelve-thirty, the time I had last seen Dr. Letheny. In spite of my defence of Dr. Letheny before Chief Blunt, I felt in my heart that his absence at such a time was, to say the least, rather strange.
It had been a queer night, even before its shocking development; that strange dinner at Corole’s, where everyone had seemed strung to such a singular pitch of excitement, our walk home through the suffocating heat, Maida’s preoccupation, my own disquiet, the storm—— And now a memory recurred to me with such force that I almost jumped—that man with whom I had collided there at the corner of the porch! Who was he? What had he been doing?
And then, of course, I recalled the flat, smooth object I had found at the edge of the orchard, there below the kitchen window.
It took only a moment or two to hurry to my room and dive my hand into the pocket of my soiled uniform. Then I sank down on the edge of the bed, staring at the thing in my hand.
I recognized it at once.
It was Jim Gainsay’s cigarette case.
The engraved fraternity shield winked at me as I turned it over in my hands and snapped it open; inside were two or three cigarettes; dazedly I noted the brand—Belwood’s. Jim Gainsay! It was he, then, whom I had met there at the steps of the porch. What had he been doing? What had been his business about St. Ann’s after midnight? And my breath caught and my heart began to pound as I recalled his words of the previous night: “If I can manage to lay my hands on fifty thousand dollars . . . can make as much money as I want . . . I can do it . . . and I will.”