Dorothy continued to stare at the closed door for some seconds, then turned her attention to Craig Porter, but his emaciated appearance was a distinct shock to her, and when she looked away her eyes were blurred with tears. Afraid to give way in the slightest degree to her emotions for fear they would master her, she walked back and forth with noiseless tread.
The minutes seemed endless, and in agony over the scene which her active imagination painted going on in the library, Dorothy at last paused before the huge mirror over the mantel and stared at herself. Dark circles under her eyes and her total lack of color told plainly of mental anguish, and with a shudder she moved away. The desk next attracted her wandering attention, and she picked up the nurse’s chart and a pencil and subconsciously read the last entry in Vera’s handwriting: “Patient continues plucking at clothing.”
Dropping the chart she walked over to the foot of the bed and regarded Craig Porter. A great pity for him drove, for the moment, her own problems out of her mind. They had been “pals” while she was at boarding-school and he a junior at Yale, and as memories returned of his merry disposition and gallant bearing a lump rose in her throat, and she hastily looked away.
A glance at the open transom over the head of Craig’s bed sent her thoughts again to the tragedy enacted in the next room on Tuesday morning.
“Only four days ago,” she murmured, and choked back a sob. Again she looked at Craig. He lay rigidly on his back, his eyes half closed, and she wondered if he could be asleep or unconscious. The only indication of life was the moving finger plucking always at the sheet drawn across his chest.
Dorothy’s thoughts again reverted to Vera and Detective Mitchell. What was transpiring in the library? It was cruel to keep her in such suspense. In her extreme nervousness she drummed the pencil which she still held against the footboard of the bed, and her eyes resting still on Craig’s hand, she unconsciously beat time to his slow-moving finger.
Painfully, laboriously the finger moved back a longer distance, then a shorter distance, then longer—and Dorothy’s pencil beat out each stroke: — · — · —
The tap of her pencil penetrated her absent-mindedness, and Dorothy stared at Craig—what had possessed her to spell out “KA,” the wireless “attention” call which precedes every transmission?
Again her eyes traveled to Craig’s hand, and the moving finger in contrast to his motionless figure and expressionless face fascinated her. Again she spelled out the “attention” signal, her pencil tapping off each short or long movement of his finger. But this time the “KA” signal was followed by her initials, and the signal: · — ···, “wait.”
Dorothy, half doubting her senses, tapped off: — · — “K,” the official call to “go ahead.”