Cub Sterling got his father a glass of water. His hand trembled as he held it. Barton eased a pillow under his head. Peters and Paton sat like frightened schoolboys in the corner. Hoffbein was still cowed.
“Better, Bear?” Dr. MacArthur asked leaning over him. Dr. Harrison turned and said:
“Here is the situation. It has to be met. You are going to accomplish nothing by fighting. Every man in this room knows that between last night and this morning a woman was murdered in this hospital. As a result there have been some near murders since....” he gave Hoffbein another look and his eye lit upon Dr. Paton and Dr. Peters.... “Actions speak louder than words. If you love the Elijah Wilson, as you have spent the day saying you do, then quit ‘emoting’ and begin to think!
“Police as a solution! Out of the question, entirely. Impossible to catch the criminal if he, she or it, knows it is shadowed, let alone what police would do to the reputation of the hospital.
“Suggestion number two. Turn the night student nurse over to psychiatrists. Impossible, for the very good reason given by Dr. MacArthur. Let alone the cruelty of the situation should she be innocent.
“Suggestion number three. Turn the whole thing over to the psychiatrists. Understand perfectly, gentlemen, that I am casting no slurs upon psychiatry, when it stays within its limits. Hoffbein points out this is a mental criminal. That’s within its limits. Suppose we turned the whole thing over to you, Hoffbein? Had you thought how long it would take you and your entire force to examine twenty people? Thirty new patients a month is all you claim you are equipped to handle and give them the proper attention, and these twenty which the hospital would turn over would have to have a great deal more than just that.
“It would take you ... every man working day and night ... and nobody seeing to the clinic ... two weeks to give us any kind of a report. Two weeks sitting upon dynamite!
“Not on your life. Our problem is this, as I see it:
“To catch the murderer, quickly, quietly, and without creating any suspicion whatever throughout the institution. We have got to keep our face, or ruin the hospital.
“How to catch the murderer, I frankly do not know. But that is the situation, as I see it now. I suggest we take it as such and work it out here....”