Then the dragging step up the ward again. The retreating figure appeared for a moment between the window and the gaze of the watching boy. Did it seem larger—taller—than Erard's?
At the end of the room it stood for a moment in the dim glow of the hooded lamp. The orderly sat up with a start and at a most inopportune moment.
The marauder seemed suddenly to tower above him. The orderly's lips opened to utter a cry of fear. The deadly weapon descended with awful force while the marauder's left hand seized the loose shirt collar of the stricken man to ease him back into the chair so that the body should not fall to the floor.
From a distance the orderly seemed still to be sleeping. In a moment the marauder glided through the door. Ernest, gasping, stifling his sobs in his pillow, cowered on his cot.
When Belinda arrived at her ward in the morning the first excitement was passed. Jacob had discovered the dead orderly in his chair, with the terrible wound in his head and the blood congealed upon the floor.
Then Erard had arrived and he had called to a passing soldier. The body was removed and Erard had wiped up the stains as well as he could. When the nurse came she had to exercise all her authority to quiet the patients. Only Ernest Spiegel, strangely enough, said not a word.
The mystery of the killing of the orderly had already been well canvassed. Was he known to have an enemy who had crept in during the night and had done the deed? For surely nobody within the ward could have accomplished this murder.
Later Belinda served Frank Sanderson his breakfast. His look assured her that he knew something about the mystery unrevealed to the other patients.
Jacob called for Ernest to get up and lend him a hand about some of his duties. The boy obeyed grumblingly. Erard was serving breakfasts at the other end of the room.
"What is it, Frank?" the nurse whispered.