“Put iodine on it,” I advised.
“I’ll sleep here in the hospital for a while,” he said. “I’ll be there on the couch in the inner office. So if there is anything wanted I shall be right here.”
I nodded approvingly and went on, but while hurrying through the corridor I became conscious of something about the casual sentences that affected me disagreeably. What was it? Ah! “I bumped it while running through the apple orchard.” To be sure he had followed the words immediately with a very reasonable explanation, but wasn’t that in itself suspicious! On the other hand, however, I had been quite sure that the man with whom I collided had been Jim Gainsay.
Well, there was no way to make sure. And I resolved that I must not allow myself to become suspicious of anything and everything. The affair was strain enough on one’s nerves as it was, without adding the horror of suspecting one’s nearest associates.
Immersed in my own not too pleasant thoughts I passed the door of Room 18 without seeing it, an occurrence that I was to find unusual. On the porch stood a policeman, his broad back to the door, but he made no effort to stop me when I descended the steps. Once in the path the trees dripped steadily on my head, the wind blew the light slicker so that it was difficult to hold it around me, and I bent my head and ran through the damp welter of leaves and small sticks, with the branches of the trees sweeping so low as to brush my hair and cap, and the shrubbery reaching out thorny twigs to clutch at my white skirt. It was shadowy there in the orchard and the hospital soon disappeared behind the intervening shrubbery and trees and gray mist. It was nearing five o’clock by that time and already growing dark so that the path was not an altogether agreeable place in which to linger.
I turned another little bend that sloped rapidly down to the bridge and almost ran into a tall figure that was leaning upon the railing. At my startled exclamation it turned to face me. It was Jim Gainsay, a sodden hat pulled low over his eyes and the collar of his capacious tweed coat turned up. He was smoking (it was a pipe I noted, thinking of the cigarette case) and casting pebbles across the water, which is not a rainy day pastime.
“Oh. It’s you.” I said.
“Miss Keate! Say, you are the very person I’ve been wanting to see. Can you tell me something of poor old Louis?”
“Louis? Oh, you mean Dr. Letheny.” I suppose I paled a little at the name. At any rate Gainsay glanced sharply at me.
“I didn’t mean to—disturb you,” he said apologetically. “You see, I only heard of it an hour or so ago, and only what that fellow O’Leary told me. Don’t talk if you would rather not.”