“The plant is in ruins,” she said.
Betty rose immediately. Ruins—the word was a fiery stimulant to her. In a few moments she ceased her pacing, saying that she was utterly weary. Helen, though leaving for the room she occupied, a flight above, could but remark upon the gleaming intensity of Betty’s eyes, and the restless leaping of her hands....
The nurse came to her. Betty went with her into the inner room. In the next fifteen minutes, the patient was more or less alone, while the studio couch, upon which the nurse was accustomed to rest, was being prepared. Unwatched, her movements quickened, a queer, furtive smile played upon her lips, and certain actions altogether uncommon occupied her concentrated attention. The key was quietly removed from the door between the studio and the living-room; a large bundle was carried from a closet-shelf to the rear window and tossed out. From behind the books in a small case near the reading-lamp a purse was produced; and finally, when the nurse was at the farthest end of the studio, Betty drew a large, sharp knife from the same hiding-place, and with astonishing quiet and force severed the telephone wires just beneath the bell-box, fastened to the wall close to the floor. The knife was returned to its hiding-place. The nurse joined her, and Betty, at the studio door, suddenly sank into a chair with a cry of exhaustion. The other ran to her.
“It is nothing! Bring some water——”
The nurse had not reached the medicine-case in the bath, when the patient sprang up and locked the intervening door of the apartment, leaving the woman inside with a “dead” telephone.
For the first time in half a year, Betty left the studio, carefully closing the main door. Out the back way, she found her parcel, and in the windy darkness put on the rain-coat, traveling hat, veil, gloves and shoes it had contained, departing breathlessly through the alley gate.
For a long time the hammering upon floors and walls could not be located in the studio-building. The outer floor of Betty’s apartment was tried, but found locked; and since there was no response to the bell, nothing came of the offerings of the earlier Samaritans. Much time was occupied by the nurse in trying to call the telephone-exchange. A stranger in the street was finally persuaded, from the upper window, to find the janitor of the building and send him to the Quiston studio. Master keys set the nurse free.
Helen Quiston first notified the Doctor, who came hastily. The story of the nurse was explicit as a hospital report.
“Is your car here, Doctor?” Miss Quiston asked presently.
“Yes.”