He turned a corner. Alan whispered: "Watch where we're going! Try to remember the location of the room! How old is she, Dr. Turber?"
"About twenty, apparently. A strange-looking little creature. I would say, of a cultured family."
We mounted a staircase. Passed down another corridor. I tried to keep my sense of location. I said: "Is she an American?"
"Probably not." He shrugged. "She is dressed very strangely. She resisted the matrons at Bellevue who would have changed her robe. She looks as though she might have wandered from some fancy dress affair last night. But by now something would be known of it, I suppose. The police have full details. I shall send her back to Bellevue—I'm not looking for any bizarre publicity."
We passed occasional inmates in the halls; they stared at us curiously, scattering and vanishing at Turber's glance. One was the young fellow, Charlie. He appeared magically at my elbow, flashed me a swift, knowing glance, and disappeared.
Abnormality was in the air, everywhere about this place. Heavy carpeted hallways; dim, with lights not yet lighted in the afternoon twilight. These patients—most of them seemed to be young men—free to move about, in apparent health; indefinably, but unmistakably abnormal. The whole place struck me as almost gruesome.
"This way, Tremont."
We were in the upper story, close under the roof. There was an elevator in the front of the building; we had not used it, but had mounted three separate flights of stairs, each remote from the other. I fancied we were at the top of the wing across from the reception room.
Turber paused and took a key from his pocket. I had noticed as we came along the halls that all the rooms opened outward; the inner side facing the courtyard was always a blank corridor wall, with no suggestion of rooms. But Turber now paused at a small, heavy mahogany door—on the courtyard side.
"She is here, Tremont. I have her locked in. She escaped from somewhere. It is often a trait of these cases—the desire to escape. If she eluded me here, the authorities would have plenty to say."