“At nine o’clock, Dr. MacArthur, I went on night duty on B Ward of Medicine Clinic. Aunt Roenna ... I mean Miss Kerr ... was on the floor and Miss Kexter, the white nurse, who had waited to give me my instructions.”

“White nurse?” Princeton Peters’ voice was polite, but demanding.

“Slang for graduate floor nurse in charge,” Cub Sterling supplied.

The student nurse was silent in her resentment. Finally she continued:

“They left together. Then I took my temperatures, counted pulses, prepared the patients for the night.”

“The patient in Bed 11, Miss Kerr,” Hoffbein began in his mesmerizing voice. “How was she?”

The girl started and turned toward him with the underlying resentment of a schoolboy stopped midway through the multiplication tables.

“She was all right, Dr. Hoffbein. She had no temperature and....”

“Her pulse?” he interrupted again.

Cub Sterling stirred restlessly and lit a cigarette.