“Hell all the time ... and then some.... ’Bout ten a drunk naval officer-beau of the dead nurse brought her a bouquet of red roses, darling. Thought she was doing duty on the ward. Didn’t know about her death. Shook the guts outa that student nurse when she told him and then began playing hide-and-seek under the patients’ beds with me.”
“The devil!”
“Yeah, himself! I got him outa the hospital, socked him, and tucked him into a parked car to sleep it off. Went over him first, though. William Brady, U. S. N. Loot. J. G.
“Then I went back to the ward. And he had left the roses on the bed of one old blattering fool and she took it that she’s next to go and can she scream! So loud the others couldn’t make a squeak. Well, the Jew doctor got there and a mess of nurses and hen medics and give them all a bromide and then they needed bed-pans again ... and then ... they had to have a drink of water. And then another bed-pan around. Like salt and pepper, you know. Now I see why the Waldorf makes money. Pay toilets for ladies.”
“And Lil?” Matt’s voice was demanding.
“Lil’s lost her nerve, Matt. Swears if you don’t get her outa there by this afternoon, she’s going to walk out. Says the examination she had to get in that damn bed was just like being frisked naked. During pan-rounds we had some conversation.
“She’s took it into her head that that student nurse, the niece of the head nurse, is doing the murders. She’s took it that the girl is like that moll she caught in the circus last spring (she says you know which one) working for a hypnotist and selling dope. Damn if Lil ain’t decided that the head nurse of the clinic, Miss Kerr, who got her stout old tail up there before it was all over, ain’t making her niece work for somebody ... ain’t both of them working for some control ... who is having them murder patients.”
“Lord God! That ties up, too.... Go on ... finish your story.”
“It’s Lil’s idea, Matt, that they are doing it because they hate young Sterling and are trying to ruin him, and get him out ... and nothing I could say ... between bed-pans and glasses of water ... could change her mind a nits worth. When Lil is out of reach ... you know what I mean ... she’s hard to reason with.
“And she’s got the creeps bad as the rest of them, now, and told me if I let that little bitch come within fifteen feet of her the rest of the night she’d....