“Could break her damn neck! Sex-repressed old maid.”
Miss Patricia Withers had been night superintendent of nurses so many years that she had developed an hourly routine.
From two to four-thirty, after all of the clinics had checked-in their midnight patient rounds, she read mystery stories.
After thirteen false clues and flukes, she had just reached the place where the real murderer was to be revealed when her telephone bell intervened.
With an intensity, every motion of which was profane, she snatched up the receiver:
“Well,” upon a rising note.
The voice at the other end quaked:
“General Superintendent’s office?”
Miss Withers checked her: “Yes. What do you want?”
“This is Medicine Clinic, Ward B, Miss Evelina Kerr, Student Nurse, speaking. The telephone of the night supervisor Medicine Clinic does not answer, so I am reporting to your office the death of Alice Tuck, patient in Bed 11.”