Last night there had been two dead men in our wing—and dead by another’s hands. Whose hand had it been?
Somehow during those black hours in that hushed and shadowy wing the thing that struck me with the most horror, that brought my heart, quivering, to my throat and gooseflesh all up my arms, was the memory of that locked closet.
Dead men can’t walk. Dead men can’t carry keys. Dead men can’t lock doors.
Who had locked that door? We must believe that it was some intruder, someone outside our little circle at St. Ann’s. And surely the police had searched the place and that fearful intruder could not still be about, hidden in some recess of the dark old halls and passageways.
And yet—who would be familiar with the plan of St. Ann’s? Who would know that the radium was in use? Who, indeed, would know of its value?
Eleven’s signal light clicked and I hastened to answer, putting down the chart at which I had been staring without even seeing its red temperature line.
I found Eleven in a chill, which was followed, as I expected, by a raging fever under which he grew steadily delirious. Dr. Balman’s orders for the night had included an opiate if conditions warranted it, so I went to the drug room.
The drug room is at the north end of the wing, directly opposite the diet kitchen. We always keep there a small supply of drugs for which we have frequent need. We do not keep the door locked as the drugs are in small quantities. In the drug room, too, we keep the various tools we are apt to need, among them a hypodermic syringe and a supply of needles. During the week past the syringe belonging to the south wing had got something wrong with its small plunger and Maida had brought her own outfit down for us to use, which had reposed beside the broken one in a drawer.
Pulling open this drawer I lifted the only syringe it contained and found it to be the broken one. Maida must be using the other, I reflected, and after waiting a few moments for her to return it I started out to find her.
She was in the kitchen, preparing a malted milk.