And in the very act of filling the thing I caught sight of something that almost made me drop it. It was only a scratch across the bit of nickel where the manufacturer’s name is engraved but it was a scratch I myself had made in order to identify it. In a hospital it is easy to get such things confused, so I had simply taken a pair of surgical scissors and scratched across the letter “K” which appeared in the manufacturer’s name, Kesselbach.
My own hypodermic syringe! How had it got there? Like a flash my mind reverted to the memory of Maida, sitting on the edge of the window sill, looking at my tool kit and taking this same tool in her pink-tipped fingers.
I administered the hypodermic automatically, sterilized the needle and replaced it, and returned to Eleven.
But in that darkened room, listening to the gradually less rapid breathing of the sick man, and the still gusty wind and rain through which a slow gray dawn was beginning to make itself felt, I found myself possessed of new problems.
5. A Lapis Cuff Link
From that morning on I took an active interest in the case—I mean, in solving the problem. Indeed, Mr. O’Leary has had the kindness to say, since, that I helped—well, I need not repeat his words. However, it is true that I did everything in my power, which was little enough, to solve the mystery that confronted us. While I am not at all inquisitive, nevertheless I do have an inquiring mind, due doubtless to the fact that I have lived in a hospital for a number of years and hospitals are hotbeds of gossip. Not malicious gossip, you understand, for nurses are one class of women in the world who can keep the faith which the ethics of the profession as well as individual integrity demand.
But anything that happens in our small world is of interest; the patient in the charity ward who almost swallowed a thermometer and had to be up-ended and shaken, the precipitate arrival of a new baby in a roadster out in front of the hospital, or the alcoholic whose language shocked—or diverted as the case might be—a whole wing.
Besides the fact that the murders had occurred in the south wing, for which I feel a responsibility—the wing, I mean, not the murders!—there were other and as serious considerations. Chief among these was the affair of the hypodermic syringe and Maida’s inexplicable behaviour the night of the seventh, and the presence of Jim Gainsay as testified by that gold cigarette case.
A hospital ought to be sanctuary and it seemed to me an offense against all the laws of humanity that this hideous thing should have happened within our walls of mercy. I deliberately tried to put myself in the frame of mind to be suspicious about anything and everything—and I trust it is no reflection on my character to say that I succeeded without much effort.
I found plenty to be suspicious about, and without going out of the way to do so. The only trouble was that, though I pride myself on being a keen and clear-minded woman and have more than the usual amount of determination, I could not arrive at any conclusion.