The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
sharply. “What _does_ concern us is--how would anybody or anything get
in here with both doors and all the windows locked, and not a chimney.”
Aggie wiped her eyes and got up.
“You laughed at me last night, Miss Lewis,” she said with dignity, “but
I wish to remind you that to the fourth dimension there are no locks,
no bars, no doors or walls.”
“When they invent that,” said Miss Lewis, opening the door to let us
out, “they’ll have to invent something like these X-ray-proof screens,
or a woman won’t dare to change her clothes.”
“And what’s more,” said Aggie, turning in the doorway, “the hand that
slew those innocent little creatures is the one I touched last night!”
“Hand!” cried Miss Lewis. “It was a _foot_ then.”
But Aggie was holding her shoulder over her face and hurrying across
the yard. At the far side she threw back a contemptuous sneeze.
* * * * *
Tish’s commission to Charlie Sands had an unexpected result. She was
almost bursting with it when I got back.
“Listen,” she said while Aggie got her spray, “doesn’t this bear out
what I’ve been saying right along? The Zoo people say positively that
none of their animals has escaped. But they took such an interest in
his inquiry that Charlie grew suspicious and bribed a keeper. He sent
this up by messenger from the office:
“‘Dear and revered spinster aunt,’” she read--“the young rascal!
‘I couldn’t tell you this over the ’phone, for it’s our exclusive
property, and will be published to-morrow morning, with photographs of
the late deceased, etc. Hero, the biggest ape in captivity, pining for
his keeper, Wesley Barker, who has been away, committed suicide in his
cage last night by hanging himself with a roller towel. He was found
dead when the assistant keeper unlocked the cage at six o’clock this
morning. Nobody knows how he got the roller towel. Charlie.’
“‘P. S.--I’ve got the roller towel, a fine long one and marked S. P. T.
Do you think the letters stand for Suicidal Purpose Towel?’”
Tish looked at me triumphantly over her reading-glasses.
“You see, Lizzie, what a little logical thinking will do. If it hadn’t
been for me, you and Aggie would have gone to your graves expecting to
be able to come back at any time and hang from chandeliers or do any
of the ridiculous buffoonery that seems to be expected of returned
spirits. We search for a ghost and we find a gorilla.”
She meant ape, of course, but the other was alliterative.
“I’m not quite clear about it yet, Tish,” I said, with my head in a
whirl. “If his cage was locked, and the keepers say he hadn’t been
free, and if Miss Blake--”
“If! If!” said Tish impatiently. “I haven’t had time to figure it all
out, of course. But mark my words, Lizzie, the mystery is solved. We
shall sleep to-night.”
But, as a matter of fact, we never even went to bed.
CHAPTER XI
IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR LOVE
It is curious to think that if Tish had been able to finish her story
to Tommy Andrews that evening, and to have given him Charlie’s letter
to read, the thing that occurred that night could scarcely have
happened. For with Tommy knowing what he did, he could have put two and
two together and have gone about things in a different way. Aggie, of
course, is a fatalist, and believes it would have happened anyhow.
In the first place, Tish felt so sure that everything was cleared up
that she told Aggie the whole story, ending with the suicide at the
Zoo. Aggie sat with her mouth open, and didn’t speak except to sneeze
until Tish was through. Then she surprised us.
“Maybe you are right, Tish,” she said. “I know I hope so. I don’t know
much about gorillas, but I guess they’re mostly hairy, aren’t they?”
“Mostly,” said Tish grimly. “I haven’t heard of any Mexican hairless
ones.”
“Well, the hand by my bed--you needn’t sneer, Tish; you can call it a
foot if you prefer foot--”
“Listen to the woman!” cried Tish. “_I_ haven’t called it anything.”
“The hand--or foot--was _not_ hairy!” said Aggie, and stuck to it. She
is that kind. Tish says she has a small mind, but I think there are
some large minds that can only hold one idea at a time.
Well, we told the whole thing again to Tommy, who had heard about the
guinea-pigs from Doctor Grimm, and who listened gravely, and Tish was
just getting out Charlie’s letter to read to him, when Miss Lewis came
in.
“Drat that woman!” Tish muttered. “She’s never around when she’s
wanted, and always butting in when she isn’t. Well, what is it?”
“Miss Blake is better, Doctor,” she said. “She is sitting up, dressed,
and--she’s leaving her door unlocked. That’s a good sign.”
“Thanks, very much,” said Tommy, looking conscious.
“It’s supper hour now,” remarked Miss Lewis. “If, when I come back, you
would care to go over to the dormitory--”
“I suppose she hasn’t asked for me?”
“No. But she asked if you were in the house.”
“Thanks,” said Tommy again. “When you come back, then. Ah--thanks, very
much.”
Miss Lewis left and Tish spread out Charlie’s letter. “Dear and revered
spinster aunt,” she began. But Tommy was looking at his watch.
“How long does she usually take for supper?” he asked. “Excuse me for
interrupting, Aunt Tish.”
“About an hour,” said Tish grimly. “She says she’s been ordered to chew
her food thoroughly. ‘Dear and revered--’”
“You know,” said Tommy, “she may get tired and go to sleep, or
something like that.”
“Not while she’s eating,” said Tish.
“I mean Miss Blake. I--I think I’ll just run over for a moment _now_,
if you don’t mind.”
“Not alone!” Tish got up and reached for her cane, but Tommy pushed her
back in her chair.
“No, indeed, dear Aunt Tish,” he said. “You must not use that knee. Nor
Miss Aggie either--”
“Aggie has no intention of using my knee,” said Tish crossly. Tommy
was sending me messages with his eyes. I’m notoriously weak as to love
affairs.
“I’ll go,” I volunteered, obeying Tommy’s signals, and go I did,
leaving Tish clutching her cane with one hand and the letter with the
other! Aggie was, as usual, oblivious and quite calm.
It was my suggestion that I play propriety from just outside the door.
Tommy went in, and I heard a rustle from the window, as if she had
turned to look at him.
“I--my aunt is just outside,” he began, hesitating. I am not his aunt,
as I have said.
“Won’t you ask her in?” She had a low, sweet voice.
“Certainly, if you wish,” he said, and made no move to do it. “You
dismissed me to-day,” he accused her.
“I didn’t need a doctor.”
“I need not have come professionally. I am here now only--well, because
I couldn’t stay away.”
She said nothing to that, as far as I could hear.
“I came also,” he said, “to ask you not to stay here alone to-night.”
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
“Only that you might do the same thing again to-night--walk in your
sleep, you know.”
I heard her chair move, as if she had turned abruptly and faced him.
“Why do you say that?” she demanded. “You _know_ I was not asleep last
night.”
“I assure you--” he began, clearly startled. “I--really thought--”
“Please!” she said, and there was another silence. Then I realized she
was crying softly.
“Don’t do that!” pleaded Tommy. “Don’t!”
“I thought you were killed!” she said, in a smothered tone. “All the
rest of the night I sat and wanted to die. I thought I had killed you!”
“Where did you sit?” asked Tommy gently.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Very much--to me.”
“I was--here,” she said, after a hesitation.
“You were _not_ here,” said Tommy. “Between _that_ and morning, I was
here four times. Where were you?”
“I was safe,” she said. “Why do you question me so?”
“Because,” he said gently, “I was in the laboratory at two o’clock
this morning. Jacobs helped me with a--wound on my shoulder. I had
looked everywhere for you and failed to find you. I thought I heard
somebody moving across the hall, and we made a casual search. We
found nothing, nobody. But during the fifteen minutes that that door
was unlocked, somebody entered the building, and cut the throats of
eleven guinea-pigs, piling them in the center of the room. And--on the
floor underneath them I picked up this afternoon a small pink rosette,
apparently off the toe of a woman’s bedroom slipper.”
“Ah!” she said, as if she found it suddenly hard to breathe. And then
she burst out unexpectedly. “After all, was it so terrible? They--they
were only guinea-pigs!”
“Yes,” said Tommy gravely, “they were only guinea-pigs.”
He came out the next moment and went back along the hall into the
hospital, having quite forgotten me. His chin was sunk on his breast,
and he walked heavily. He was as bewildered as I had been. We saw
him only once again that evening, and then only for a minute. He was
preparing to station his guards through the house, much to Tish’s
disgust.
“It’s idiotic,” she confided to Aggie and me that night as Aggie was
getting ready for bed. “Isn’t the creature dead? Do they expect it to
come back from the spirit world and do a materializing seance for them
while they wait?”
“That’s all very well, Tish,” said Aggie, turning on all the lights and
getting into bed, “but that hand was not hairy.”
“Foot, you mean,” said Tish. “If that is a footprint on the wall of
that room up-stairs, it was a foot you touched last night.”
At nine o’clock that night Tommy had a talk with Miss Durand, the
night nurse of K ward. She denied being out of the ward between
twelve-ten and one o’clock, and characterized Bates’ whole story as a
fabrication.
“He’s always making trouble, Doctor,” she told Tommy. “He brings in
tobacco and morphine and sells it to the men, and you take his word
against mine!”
And Tommy said that Bates, with Miss Durand’s outraged eyes on him,
reduced the time of her absence to ten minutes, and might have gone
further if Tommy hadn’t turned away in disgust.
CHAPTER XII
THE CARBOLIC CASE AND A BROWN COAT
Tommy was very gloomy that night. He went about placing guards, with
his mouth set in a grim line and his eyes hard. A few of the nurses
knew what was going on, but with the exception of the three of us, none
of the patients had been told.
To Tish’s assurance that the trouble was over, that the death of Hero,
the ape, meant the end of the disturbance, Tommy turned a tolerant
smile and a deaf ear. I would have given a good bit to have had Tish’s
conviction, but no theory that was based on Hero at the Zoo could
possibly involve Miss Blake. And Tommy and I knew that Miss Blake was
involved.
I had not told Tish the particulars of Tommy’s visit to the girl’s
room, or about the rosette he had confronted her with. To be candid,
Tish was disagreeable about my having gone with Tommy, and only relaxed
when, at supper time, a package came from Charlie Sands, and proved to
contain the very towel with which the giant ape had been killed.
“Thought you might like it,” Charlie wrote. “I snitched it while the
keeper’s back was turned. Gruesome, but interesting, isn’t it? The
beast was almost human, and as far as I know this may be the towel with
which he performed his final ablutions--or do apes ablute?”
Tish laid it solemnly out on the bed and, going to the dresser drawer,
brought out the one that had, as you may say, suspended Johnson. They
were absolutely alike, even to the position of the S. P. T. which
distinguished them both.
Tommy came into Aggie’s room about eleven o’clock and sat, as usual,
on the foot of the bed. He had lost his customary air of good-natured
raillery, and looked tired.
“I’ve placed them all,” he said. “Counting myself, there are fourteen
of us, and I don’t think a germ could escape from any of the wards
without my knowing it.”