The patient in Room 18

by M. G. Eberhart

In my abstraction I had worn the borrowed slicker to my room; as I started down to the dining room I threw it over my arm. Idly wondering whose coat I had appropriated I ran my hand into a pocket, drawing out a man’s handkerchief. It was large and white and had no distinguishing marks on it. But there was a faint scent—I pressed the square of linen to my nose, sniffed—and sniffed again with quickened interest. Faint but unmistakable, the scent of ether emanated from its folds.

I stopped midway on the stairs, stared at the thing and deliberately went through the other pockets. There was nothing more to be found; no identifying label or initials on the whole garment.

One yellow slicker is very much like another, and search though I did I found no means of discovering its owner. I felt, however, that I should like to have the ether smell clinging to that handkerchief explained. Possibly if I returned it to the rack and watched to see who came for it I should learn, at least, the identity of its owner. Thinking that no one would call for it during the dinner hour, the quietest time of the whole day, I replaced the handkerchief and hung the slicker on the hook from which I had taken it, and went down to dinner. But when I returned some fifteen minutes later, after hurrying over my dinner, the slicker was gone and I had not the faintest idea as to who had removed it.

I gave the note from Jim Gainsay to Maida when I met her in the hall outside the dining room and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing her crimson vividly as she read it. The crimson, however, was succeeded by a pallor that went to her lips as she finished reading the few sentences, and during the meal she kept her eyes steadfastly on her plate and ate practically nothing. And shortly after dinner, happening to be standing near an east window, I saw a slim, shadowy figure, crowned in a white cap, winding its way into the apple orchard. Something after seven o’clock, when I was catching forty winks in my own room, Maida came in. The soft frame of black hair around her face had little beads of mist caught in it and I did not doubt that Jim Gainsay had succeeded in seeing her.

She did not mention him, however, but fussed around the room for a while, playing with the manicure things I had left on the dressing-table top, flipping through the leaves of the last Surgical News, and generally behaving as a woman does whose thoughts are elsewhere. She even picked up my tool kit, commenting on the curved bandage scissors and shining forceps and playing idly with the tiny plunger of my own hypodermic set.

We said nothing of the affair of the previous night; it was too recent, its developments too terrifying; we were both, I suppose, unconsciously fortifying ourselves against the ordeal of the coming second watch, which the memory of the last was not calculated to make easier.

Maida had two crimson spots on her cheeks—from the walk in the rain, I judged—but her eyes had slender purple shadows under them, her hands, usually so steady, fluttered a little over the tools she was fingering, she either spoke too rapidly of some trivial matter or lapsed into silence, and when someone passing coughed suddenly Maida started visibly, the pupils of her eyes darkened swiftly, and she cast a quick, apprehensive glance over her shoulder toward the door.

But since it was only to be expected that we both show the strain of the last twenty-four hours, I thought nothing of her evident uneasiness.

She had not been in the room more than half an hour when I was called to the third-floor telephone. The connection was poor and it took a few moments to find that it was Miss Neil who was wanted, and when I returned to my own room Maida had gone and I did not see her again until we met in the south wing at twelve o’clock.

Contrary to our unacknowledged apprehensions, second watch that night went much the same as on other nights. The electric lights had finally been repaired, though the utmost illumination was little enough to suit my taste. Just in front of the south door a policeman, tipped perilously back in his chair, slumbered spasmodically and I must say that, though he was no beauty, he was a most agreeable sight.