“Let me see. It is now four o’clock. I will go to the hospital. You may have an opportunity this evening. I cannot promise, but it may be so. Will you remain here until I get back. You have spent over an hour in this room,” he added, smiling. “You won’t mind another half hour or so, I’m sure.”
“How kind you are!” she murmured.
“Not at all. As Chick says, it is all in my day’s work.”
Chick brought a bundle of magazines to her, and placed a chair for her at the big table, with another for her father.
Carter smiled inwardly as he noted the assiduous attentions of his assistant. Bessie Silvius was a pretty girl.
With a cheerful nod of farewell to Bessie and her father, and another for Chick, the detective went out, picked up a taxi at the next corner, and sped away to the Universal Hospital.
He knew his way about the big building, and did not require anybody to show him how to reach the private room he had engaged for Howard Milmarsh. It was on the fourth floor, and there was good elevator service. In fact, there were two passenger elevators, besides others for taking patients, on cots, from one floor to another, and for other hospital uses.
Most of the doctors and nurses knew him, and he had to stop and speak to several of them before he was allowed to enter the elevator and tell the attendant to put him off on “the fourth.”
As he walked down the long corridor on his way to the room, he met the nurse who was in charge of Howard Milmarsh at night.
“How is he, Miss Jordan?” he asked.