"Tell him—I'll tell him you're a newspaper man. Some of them have been here already, no doubt. We won't go into it—you won't have to say much."
I was, in actuality, a pilot in the mail service from Bennett Field down the coast to Miami. I was off now, these three summer months. But posing as a newspaper man was out of my line.
"I don't know," I said dubiously. "I have no credentials. If he asks me—"
"I'll do most of the talking, Ed." He jumped up suddenly, went to glance into the corridor, and came back. "Come here, I want to show you something."
He drew me to the windows. We pushed the portieres aside, and raised one of the shades. We were some ten feet above the level of the paved inner courtyard. Alan murmured: "Just look, Ed—queer construction of this place! I've often wondered, and so did father."
Queer construction indeed! The quadrangular building completely inclosed this inner yard. At the basement level it was all normal enough. Windows and doors opening from what seemed engine rooms; the kitchen; the laundry. And at this first story it was normal also. These windows through which we were looking; and other windows and occasional balconies in each of the wings. But above this first story there were three others and then the flat roof above them. And in these three upper floors so far as I could see there was not a window! Nothing but the sheer, blank stone walls!
"What would you make of that, Ed? Crazy architecture—they said that when the place was built. There are no courtyard rooms at all in the upstairs floors—nearly half the building goes to waste. Turber designed it—"
"But what did he say?"
"Nothing much, I fancy. It was his own business. Perhaps, merely that he could afford the luxury of all outside rooms for his patients. And look at that inner building—"