The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
I think the laugh did the little nurse good, but when we left, a few
minutes later, Miss Lewis halted me a few steps from the door. We heard
her cross the room quickly and the bolt of the door slip into place.
“Queer, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lewis. And I thought it was.
Tommy Andrews came back late that night to see Aggie, but she had
stopped sneezing and dropped into a doze. He beckoned me out into the
hall.
“How is she?” he asked. “Having been quick-silvered inside, I daresay
she’s been reflecting! Never mind, Miss Lizzie--I couldn’t help that.”
“Tish wants to see you, Tommy,” I said. “She--we found something this
afternoon and I don’t mind saying we are puzzled.”
“More mystery?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me somebody
else has shed his fleshy garment and hung it up--”
“Please _don’t_,” I said, looking over my shoulder nervously. The hall
was almost dark.
“Look here,” Tommy suggested in a whisper, “I’ll make a bargain with
you. I’ll go in and listen to Aunt Tish without levity--I give you my
word, no frivolity--if you’ll come over and play propriety while I see
Miss Blake.”
Seeing me eye him, he went on guiltily: “She’s--sick, you know, and
I’ve been there two or three times to-day already. If it gets out among
the nurses--_please_, dear, good Aunt Lizzie!”
Now, I’m not his aunt. For that matter, I’m a good ten years younger
than Tish, but he’s a handsome young rascal, and when a woman gets too
old to be influenced by good looks, it’s because she’s gone blind with
age, so I agreed on one condition.
“Yes, if you’ll see Tish first,” I said, and he agreed.
That was how we happened to be in Tish’s room when Aggie screamed.
Tish had just got to the footprint-on-the-wall part of her story,
and even Tommy was looking rather queer, when Aggie sneezed. Then
almost immediately she shrieked and the three of us were on our feet
and starting for the door before she stopped. As we reached the hall,
a nurse was running toward us, and the stillness in Aggie’s room was
horrible.
It was dark. Which was strange, for I’d left the night light on at
Aggie’s request. Tommy pushed into the room first.
“Where’s the light switch?” he demanded. “Are you there, Miss Aggie?”
There was no answer, but in the darkness every one heard a peculiar
rustling sound, such as might be made by rubbing a hand over a piece of
stiff silk. It was the nurse who found the switch almost instantly, and
I think we expected nothing less than Aggie hanging by her neck to the
chandelier. But she was lying quietly in bed, in a dead faint.
When she came to, she muttered something about a dead foot and fainted
again. By eleven o’clock she seemed pretty much herself once more and
even smiled sheepishly when Tommy suggested that it had been the fault
of the thermometer. She thought herself that she had dreamed it, and
Tish and I let her think so. But both of us had seen the same thing.
Just over the head of Aggie’s bed the pipe-molding was wrenched loose
and pulled down out of line!
CHAPTER VI
CANDLE AND SKYLIGHT
Tish sent Miss Lewis in to sit with Aggie, and the three of us,
including Tommy, met in Tish’s room. She had brought her alcohol
teakettle with her, and she insisted on making a cup of tea all around
before we talked things over.
“Besides,” she remarked, measuring out the tea, “it’s about a quarter
of twelve now, and we may need a little tea-courage by midnight.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” Tommy said, from the bed, holding his
empty cup ready for the tea. “I can get something from the medicine
cupboard outside that has tea knocked out in the first round.”
“Not whiskey, Tommy!” Tish said with the teapot in the air.
“Certainly _not_! _Spiritus frumenti_,” Tommy said with dignity, and
Tish was reassured. But I knew what he meant, my great uncle having
conducted a country pharmacy and done a large business among the
farmers in that very remedy.
When we’d had our tea and some salted wafers, Tish drew up a chair and
faced Tommy and myself.
“Now,” she said, “what did Aggie see?”
“Personally,” Tommy remarked, balancing his teaspoon across the bridge
of his nose, and holding his head far back to do it, “personally, I’m
glad she only saw--or felt--a foot. It proves her really remarkable
quality of mind. The ordinary woman, in a stew like that, would have
seen an entire corpse, not to mention smelling sulphur.”
Tish took the spoon off his nose and gave him a smart slap on the ear.
“Thomas!” she said, “you will either be serious or go home. Do you
remember what we told you about the room up-stairs, a _foot_-mark on
the wall not three feet from the ceiling?”
Tommy nodded, with both hands covering his ears.
“Do you realize,” Tish went on, “that _that_ room is directly over the
one Aggie is occupying?”
“Hadn’t thought of it,” said Tommy. “Is it?”
“Yes. Tommy Andrews, Aggie may or may not have dreamed of that ice-cold
foot, but one thing she did _not_ dream; Lizzie and I both saw it. The
pipe-molding over Aggie’s bed is pulled loose from the wall and bent
down.”
Tommy stared at us both. Then he whistled.
“No!” he said, and fell into a deep study, with his hands in his heavy
thatch of hair. After a minute he got off the bed and sauntered toward
the door.
“I’ll just wander in and have a look at it,” he said, and disappeared.
It was Tish’s suggestion that we put the light out and sit in the
dark. Probably Tommy’s nearness gave us courage. As Tish said, in five
minutes it would be midnight, and almost anything might happen under
the circumstances.
“And as honest investigators,” she said, “we owe it to the world and to
science to put ourselves _en rapport_. These things _never_ happen in
the light.”
We could hear Tommy speaking in a low tone to Miss Lewis, but soon
that stopped, although he did not come back. Even with the door open,
a dimly-outlined rectangle, I wasn’t any too comfortable. Tish sat
without moving. Once she leaned over and touched my elbow.
“I’ve got a tingle in both legs to the knee,” she whispered. “Do you
feel anything?”
“Nothing but the slat across the back of this chair,” I replied, and
we sat silent again. I must have dozed almost immediately, for when I
roused, the traveling clock was striking midnight, and Tish was shaking
my arm.
“What’s that light?” she quavered.
I looked toward the hall, and sure enough the outline of the door was a
pale and quavering yellow.
“The door frame is moving!” gasped Tish.
“Fiddle!” I snapped, wide awake. “Somebody’s out there with a moving
light. Where’s Tommy?”
“He hasn’t come back. Lizzie, go and look out. I can’t find my cane.”
“Go yourself!” I said sourly.
Well, we went together, finally, tiptoeing to the door and peering out.
The light was gone; only a faint gleam remained, and that came down the
staircase to the upper floor.
“Damnation!” said Tommy’s voice, just at our elbow. And with that he
darted along the hall and up the stairs, after the light.
Now Tish is essentially a woman of action. She’s only timid when she
can’t do anything. And now she hobbled across to the foot of the
stairs, with me at her heels.
“That was no earthly light, Lizzie!” she said in a subdued tone. “Do
you remember what Aggie said, about the light when Mr. Wiggins died?”
I’d been thinking about it myself that very moment.
“I’d feel better with some sort of weapon, Tish,” I protested, as we
started up, but Tish only looked at me in the darkness and shook her
head. I knew perfectly well what she meant: that no earthly weapon
would be of any avail. Considering what we thought, I think that we got
up the staircase at all is very creditable.
The light was there, coming from one of the empty rooms, and streaming
out into the dark hall. There was somebody moving in the room. We heard
a window closing, and then the footsteps coming toward the door. The
next moment the light itself came into the hall. It was a candle, and
Miss Blake was carrying it!
I made out Tommy’s figure flattened in a doorway, and then the light
disappeared again as Miss Blake went into the next room, the one where
Johnson had been found. She was there a long time, and once we heard
her exclaim something and the light from the doorway wavered, as if the
candle had almost gone out.
She went into each private room, then into the ward, and finally there
remained only the mortuary. Tish clutched my arm. Would this bit of a
girl, in her long white wrapper, her childish braid, her small bare
feet thrust into bedroom slippers, would she dare that grisly place?
She did not keep us in doubt long. She went directly to the foot of the
mortuary steps and stood, her candle held high, looking up. Then she
began to mount them, slowly, as if every atom of her will were required
to urge her frightened muscles. Tommy stirred uneasily in his doorway.
The large double doors to the mortuary stood partly open. She pushed
them back quietly and hesitated, candle still high. Then she went in,
and by the paling light we knew she had gone to the far end of the
room. Tommy came out from the doorway and tiptoed down the hall. We
could see his outline against the gleam.
The stillness was terrible. We could hear her moving around that
awful place, could hear, even at that distance, the soft swish of her
negligée on the floor. And then, without any warning, she spoke. It was
uncanny beyond description, although we heard nothing she said.
“My God!” said Tish, forgetting herself.
There was a sound immediately after. Tish said it was a thud, as if a
chair had been upset, but I insisted that it sounded more like a window
thrown up with terrific force. The light went out immediately, and we
heard footsteps running away from us.
“Tommy!” Tish called. But nobody answered. We were left there alone in
the darkness, shivering with fright.
I am very shaky about what happened next. I remember Tish fumbling for
her cane, and saying she was going to follow Tommy, and my holding her
back and telling her not to be a fool--that the boy was safe enough.
And I remember seeing a light behind us and the old night watchman
coming up the staircase with his electric flash, and trying to tell him
something was wrong in the mortuary.
And then, as my voice gave way, we heard a shout overhead, and
immediately the crash of broken glass and a thud into the hall just
ahead of us. The watchman pushed us aside and ran.
Tommy was lying unconscious on the floor with the pieces of a broken
skylight all around him.
CHAPTER VII
INSINUATIONS AND RECRIMINATIONS
Miss Lewis had heard the crash and came running, with the hall nurse
from the floor below. Tish was sitting on the floor among the pieces of
glass, with Tommy’s head on her knee, crying over him, when they got
there. He opened his eyes just then, and lay staring up at the hole in
the skylight above, as if he was puzzled. Then he turned his head and
saw who was holding him, and made an effort to sit up.
“You--needn’t look so tragic, Aunt Tish,” he said. “I’m--I’m all
right,” and fell back on her lap again.
Miss Lewis got down and began to feel him for broken bones.
“Skull’s whole, thank goodness!” she muttered. “Can you move your legs,
Doctor?”
Tommy lifted them in turn, making grimaces of pain. Then he lifted his
right arm. It fell as if he couldn’t support its weight.
“I’ve bruised my shoulder,” he said, and lay back with his eyes closed.
“Get his coat off,” ordered Miss Lewis, and I knelt to help her. But
Tommy resisted.
“I’m all right,” he said crossly. “I’ll look after it later myself.”
“Tommy!” said Tish. “Let them take your coat off.”
“I won’t have it off,” he insisted, and when she persisted he was
almost vicious.