“Roll ’em up, Snod! Time to get up!”

Snod opened his eyelids narrowly and then closed them again. He began experimenting slowly with his head, burying his chin in his long neck and stretching his shoulder muscles.

“Any news?” his voice was still somnambulant.

“Lots! Got your wits about you?” Matt Higgins began pulling himself up on one of the stools and his voice was grating. The old deserted laboratory building was on the side of the hospital where no afternoon sun ever penetrated. It was now inky black in the room.

“Where do you think my wits would be? In this feather bed?” Snod replied sarcastically, raising himself to a sitting posture, and rubbing his aching neck with his hands.

“Stinks like a skunk in here!” Snod stood up carefully and walked toward one of the dusty lab sinks. He turned on the tap and stuck his head under it.

“Men have it over women in lots of ways,” he 260 said as he took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his dripping face. “What’s the dope, Matt?”

“After you went back to sleep I went to MacArthur and he was as frightened as an old maid in a harem. All up in the air ... hundreds of feet. Said tomorrow is visiting day throughout the hospital and that it will be all over town by tomorrow night about the nurse being murdered and that after last night ... you know ... the-you-you-must-do-something line....

“So I made him come across with all he knew and sent for Rogers. He’ll be here by six on the mail plane or eight via Chicago.

“The man everybody but MacArthur suspects is young Sterling.”

“The hell you say!” Snod continued placidly waving his wet handkerchief in the dead air.

“Yep. I’ve seen him and he’s not guilty.”

“Huh? Howd’y’know?”

“Nothing concrete. Except he took me over his building. Left his dying father at MacArthur’s request, because I was supposed to be a friend of the old man. He’s worried, jumpy, nervous as a cat locked up, but he’s square or I’m a ninny.”

“You’ve been one a long time, Matt. Still, if he’s where we can keep an eye on him, just in case a real unbiased detective, like me, for instance, should disagree with you, I suppose we’d better not tell 261 Lil. If she ain’t improved since this morning, she might do a real fade-out, and then where’d we be, with MacArthur pressing for immediate action? In hell! Who else charmed the pants off you, mister?”

“Shut up, Snod. We’ve only twenty minutes before you go back on!”

Snod groaned deeply. “A light luncheon, before I again enter the dominion of women?”

“Eat out of the ward refrigerator and shut up!

“MacArthur gave me the head of all nurses, the leavings of a general gone senile, and she took me to all of the clinics. So I could look the doctors over. Administrator from a distant hospital line, you know.... I’ve hammered into MacArthur that it’s a crazy doctor.”

“Could you find one, Sherlock?”

“Didn’t see anything else! Crazy ain’t the beginning of it! First we took in the Eye Clinic, all the wards dark and dismal and the air full of unuttered screams, and people putting their hands up close to their faces to see if they are better.

“That’s run by an old soft soap artist with hair and complexion like the guts of a soft-boiled egg. Pure and precious. Pat the tail off a Shetland pony and grab out your eye ’fore you knew it. Peters. Doctah Petahhs. Princeton ’92 and Sons of Cincinnati rosette.”

“Your control?” Snod’s voice was casual and 262 flat. “Snappin’ out eyes gets a man in the habit of murdering, Mr. Higgins.”

“Aw hush, you little pan-toter. He’d run from a Pansy in a dark alley.”

“So would I.”

“From there,” Higgins’ voice was stern, “we went on to see the kids. The pediatrician’s square. Eyes like a searchlight. Kids play around him. Kids and dogs know. He does not suspect Sterling, and he knew I was a detective. He didn’t say either.”

“Didn’t anybody utter a word this morning?”

“Snod! Gimme a chance!”

“Birds of a feather ... you sound as loony as the rest, Matt!”

Matthew Higgins flew off the handle. The darkness concealed his steely eyes, but his voice was clear and hard.

“Are you telling me, or am I telling you? Ever been in a slaughter house where they were doing everything from little pigs ... on up?”

“Sorry, Matt. Might have known it would get you! The trouble with you is you are up against the medical profession, and the medical profession is composed of men who wait until you are down to hit you, and you ain’t used to....”

“Ain’t they queer, Snod? I didn’t see but two he-men this morning, and I saw at least ten doctors, 263 and about half of that ten, I’d be damned if I could tell you what they was.”

“Statistics show that one-third of the silk underwear sold in the United States is bought by doctors.” Snod was grave and authoritative.

“I believe you, kid!”

“They buy it for the nurses!” Snod continued monotonously.

“Aw ... dry up! ... From the kids we went to the Maternity Clinic, and speaking of he-she things! Well he wore pants and a vest, but he talked like a nervous wife of fifty and his hands were always twisting....”

“I know. A rat catcher!”

“They call him Prissy. How did you know?”

“And he believes Sterling is the murderer,” Snod announced.

“Say, you been sleeping all morning?”

“Yeah. But I’m a real detective. An obstetrician is the busiest animal on God’s earth. He don’t have time to change his undershirt. Any woman can call him at any hour, and what do you expect from a man in that fix but gossip, mister? ’Spose you spent your life....”

“Aw, naw!” Matt’s response was definite. “He and Peters are buddies.”

“Sissies. It takes guts to fight death, and skill to be a doctor. Guts is masculine, skill is feminine. They’re sissies.”
264

“It takes more than that to be a urologist, Snod. The one here holds out in a clinic where you see men ... Jesus! ... The damnedest looking liquids suspended over the beds hitched under the sheets with rubber tubing and patients who curse your soul black if you so much as sneeze as you pass them!”

“After the ball is over,” Snod inserted flatly.

“Well, believe me, that doctor is all man.”

“Have to be. Urologists rule men and men rule the world, Mr. Higgins.”

“Yeah? He believes young Sterling is innocent, and he knew I was ‘a dick’ the minute he laid eyes on me.”

“And how do you know that? Personal charm? Or just ‘two strong men face to face’?”

Higgins ignored the remark and continued:

“Offered me a good cigar, and looked me smack in the eye, and then says, ‘A friend of Doctor MacArthur and Dr. Bear Sterling is always welcome in my clinic, sir.’ He’s the bird made MacArthur hire us against the opposition, or I’m a green one.”

“You are that, too. But you are right about him. Everything comes to a G. U. including ‘dicks’.”

“How do you know?”

“My grandmother told me. What about the psychiatrist?”

“Ever faced one of those birds?”
265

Snod had felt his way back to the couch and sat down.

“Nope, but I seen ’em telling fortunes at Coney Island.”

“You crazy? This fellow here is ’bout ten thousand jumps from a tent. Got a building with swimming pools, and roof gardens and woodwork painted green and locks on all the doors....”

“And a staff of old maid nurses and unmarried women doctors, who are always telling you ‘sex done it.’ Night-prowling alley cats, at heart. What about him?”

“His name is Hoffbein, and he’s got a little body like the tripod of a camera, without the stiffening, holding up his mentality. Got a head like a German. All front, with oriental black eyes, a controlled sissy mouth, a beaky nose, and no back.

“He slithered all over the clinic with us, and God that was gruesome! Perfectly healthy people, eating saltpetre in their food and wondering how long before they’d be nuts! And him saying, ‘Routine, as you of course know, is the basis of all recovery.’ And way down below a voice wailing ‘Rock-a-bye-baby.’

“He ain’t a man, he ain’t just a sissy, he ain’t even a human being. If you put a bullet through him, it wouldn’t even kill him.

“And he’s the thing we got to catch. He’s it!

“He’s so crazy that you ain’t sure whether he’s 266 crazy or not. He’s the control. He’s the person who is working the Kerr women and Lil is right. And he knows I know it, too.”

“Charm it out of you?”

“After I’d seen the Surgical Clinic, and was always trying to ask intelligent questions about costs and that kind of thing to the man who is Bear Sterling’s assistant, Miss Carruthers took me to Cub Sterling and I told you about him. But I saw the Head Nurse, Miss Kerr, too. And then I knew I was right. Seen her?”

“Last night. During the Battle of Roses.” Snod’s reply came through the darkness with confirmation.

“Then I ditched Miss Carruthers and went back to the Psychiatric Clinic and into Hoffbein’s office before anybody realized I was there. He was sitting in a room with bare walls, at a bare desk, and when he looked up and saw me, he almost lost his ‘control.’

“He looks up and his eyes lost their whites like a horse, and he says slow, ‘So.’

“‘Yep!’ I said, ‘You’re right.’

“Then I walked over and sat down in a chair beside his desk, and we looked at each other and he tried to make me feel like the furniture in the room was melting and running together and so I says:

“‘I know the multiplication tables well as Kim did, Doc. The last person who tried that hypnotizing 267 stunt on me was the head of a snowbird ring at Atlantic City. She is making dresses in the Federal Pen in Atlanta, now. What about Miss Kerr?’

“He turned red like a cooked beet and then he switched his head like a sparrow and says:

“‘Miss Kerr is a nurse in this hospital and a very trusted person. Your name? Real name?’

“‘Don’t matter a tinker’s damn, Doc! Miss Kerr was a patient of yours some years ago and you used to hypnotize her to put her to sleep and this doll, the doll which is always left by the murderer in Medicine Clinic, was found in her desk and you knew it yesterday. What about Miss Kerr?’

“He looked kind of scared a minute and then he turned on me confidentially and says:

“‘If you want my opinion, Mr..., these unfortunate occurrences are the work of Dr. Sterling, Junior. An excellent example of a man who has devoted the best years of his active life entirely to his profession. To speak plainly, sexual abstinence has caused an inversion of that natural energy by which a man obtains his balance, and is responsible for his aberration. When a man devotes himself entirely to any profession he in time becomes somewhat unbalanced. If you understand...?’

“‘You bet I do, Dr. Hoffbein. You are in a rotten position, and all the evidence you have been trying to build up against young Sterling in every 268 staff meeting for a week won’t hold water fifteen minutes if you can’t explain to me by four o’clock about the doll....’

“He stiffened and replied: ‘I’m going to Miss Standish’s funeral.’

“‘See you there, then,’ I said, rising.

“At the door I turned and his eyes were spraying venom on me like a snake’s fangs, and he says:

“‘What patients tell me in confidence, I will never....’

“‘Reveal on the gallows,’ I finished slowly. ‘Think it over, Doctor! You’ll be guarded till you make up your mind.’

“Then I shut the door, hard, and came here.”

“Who is watching him?”

“A local man the dick at the Roosevelt got me. It’s five to three. You’d better be moving....”

Snod rose slowly. “Where are you going? What shall I tell Lil?”

“To scare the guts out of the Kerr women. Tell Lil she’s right.”

Snod left the building by the basement door and started up the service corridor toward the Medicine Clinic. Matt Higgins rolled his overcoat carefully in the crumpled copy of The Morning Call, hid it in a corner of the room and left the building by the main corridor door. Since it was three o’clock and the duty changes were at two and five, he took a chance....
269

By two-thirty the patients on Ward B had been bedded down for their afternoon nap. Two student nurses were on duty. Miss Kexter was off for the afternoon.

Sally Ferguson lay in her bed, her arms locked above her head, her knees crossed and making a tent of the covers. She was smoking her last cigarette, inhaling slowly and gazing from the window. She had slept all night, a loggy black sleep, and was fatigued and internally trembly. A boredom, a lassitude and a loneliness were descending.

An overpowering desire to see Cub, backed by a hundred residents and internes, if necessary ... just to watch his eyes change and slip over hers ... to see again, even at a distance, the nice way the black hair grew below his white cuffs and over the knuckles of his fingers ... to hear from his own lips that, “Doctor Bear Sterling is doing nicely, thank you” ... instead of having it smirked by prim nurses....

The ash-laden tip fell upon the covers. She flounced them and decided even if his father died, even if The Call was bombed, she had Cub forever and he had her and they both knew it, and life was going to be complete ... yet!

The door to her room breathed gently inward. A man wiggled through and closed it. For a moment he stood entirely silent, then his beady black eyes snapped and his bumpy body relaxed.
270

The rush of asthmatic air made Sally slide her eyes and gasp:

“Jumbo! Where did you come from?”

Her voice relaxed into amusement and continued:

“You are an angel from God. Give me a cigarette!”

Without withdrawing his thumbs from his vest armholes, he pushed two fingers into a pocket and flipped his cigarette case onto the bed.

Sally’s eyes narrowed. Jumbo had a spell of his “scoop hysterics.” Something was up! She lit the new cigarette and remained silent.

The words splashed out of the man.

“Hell of a time getting in. No visitors. You ain’t lookin’ sick, Ferg. Sneaked up the porch stairs. Half hour stomach travel and five minutes walking. I ain’t got time to ask polite questions.

“Listen, Ferg. You been here long enough to get the dope. What is it? Come on, kid! What about this Cub Sterling? Bucks wants to....”

Sally kept his eyes on her body and fought for time.

“What? Who?”

“Bucks. In case you’ve forgot, Ferg, he’s City Editor of The Call and saving six columns on the front page for this Sterling story.”

Sally took the cigarette from her lips and said crisply:
271

“Why don’t you quit bubbling, Jumbo, and tell me what it’s all about?”

“About. Je-sus Christ, Ferg. About! It’s about this guy Sterling murdering patients in that ward out there. Bucks says you’ve had time to get ‘in’ and it’s up to you to get the dots on him. Four people gone out in the same bed since Thursday. All patients of his. Done between eleven and twelve at night. He jabbed ’em with a hypodermic. For four days we’ve known hell had burst loose up here, but we couldn’t squeeze blood from no tick. Then this morning a woman dropped a bunch of red roses in the service corridor and we got a tip.

“The Attorney-General’s trying to get the Governor to ‘hush’ it ... but Bucks says he can fry his tail in hell. It’s the biggest story west of the Mississippi in twenty years and he ain’t goin’ to lock those presses ’till ten tonight. In the meantime you got to....”

As usual when excited, Jumbo walked up and down and did not look at the person he was addressing. That habit gave Sally time to take the shock before he turned.

She held the cigarette between her lips to keep them from trembling. Her feet were flat upon the mattress, pressing against each other desperately. Her voice was hail-fellow and confident. She said:

“Thanks for the chance you and Bucks are giving me. It’s white! Darned white! And lucky, too, 272 Jumbo. He’s my doctor. Due to come to see me in about half an hour. You go back and tell Bucks to give me till five. It’s now a quarter to three. I’ll get the story! Gimme a pencil and some paper. Beat it, before somebody comes in...!”

“But Bucks said....”

“You tell Bucks Hammond if he wants this story, he’ll get it ... provided he gives me a little time. I know the ropes around here. I know the man. The only way to muff it is for you to stand there till you’re caught! Quit sucking your tongue like a lolly-pop and beat it. If you are not back by five I’ll wrap my story in a cake of soap and sling it out that window!”

Jumbo tripped to the door, turned and said:

“You’re a swell kid, Ferg! Everybody’s missin’ you!”

“Been one twenty-four years! Tell ’em hello, Jumbo!”

After he was gone Sally Ferguson pulled the sheets over her head and sobbed dryly for five minutes. Then she tiptoed over to the washbasin, put cold water under her eyes and got back into bed.

Her mouth was set. Her head was very high.

He was as innocent as she was and ... by God ... she’d prove it. But you couldn’t prove anything lying here being policed every pulse counting. You had to get out and think and....
273

She rang her bell; when the student nurse came, she smiled wanly and said:

“Dr. Mattus and Dr. Sterling said I might get up for a while this afternoon. Will you bring me my clothes now? They said from three to five.”

The girl drank the smile. When she returned with the clothes she apologized:

“Can you manage alone, Miss Merriweather? The other nurse has the cramps and doesn’t want to report off duty, less she has to. So I’m doing most of...?”

“Sure,” Sally smiled. “Poor kid!”

The girl turned from the door and said, “Ring if you need me!”

A terrible strength began to flow through Sally. A strength which centered just under the skin and left her vitals hollow and quivering. It took ten precious minutes to dress. Inside, and with every motion of pulling on stockings, adjusting garters, smoothing her hair, inside, deep inside, her consciousness sang:

“Cub Sterling, you are not! You are not! Cub darling, I love you! I love you!”

The deep singing was like a walking cane as she started across the room for the door. She pulled the knob, hesitantly, ascertained the student nurse was out of sight, and gathering all of her strength, ran the few feet to the screen porch door. When her knees gave way she was on the concrete steps, halfway 274 down to Ward A, and Ward A was the ground floor.

A wild mental clearing made her understand that with or without strength, she had to reach that porch off Ward A, get over the railing and drop to the ground, before the nurses began rolling the patients out for their afternoon airing.

Ten minutes later, a young girl, walking with an erectness every motion of which hurt, entered Otto’s restaurant and leaned against the deserted bar.

She fastened her violet eyes into Otto and said:

“I love Cub Sterling as much as you do. I think I can save him ... if you’ll lend me a dollar for two hours....”

The money was in her hand before Otto could open his lips. When he did open them, the girl was already in a taxi-cab, and the cab was coasting down the hill from the hospital.

When Miss Carruthers, in response to a telephone call, brought Evelina Kerr, student nurse, to Dr. MacArthur’s office, Matt Higgins rose from a chair and said:

“Miss Carruthers, Dr. MacArthur just stepped out a minute.... He asked me to wait until he returned and ask you to please let this nurse...?”

His “silver threads” smile brought an immediate 275 acquiescence. The old lady smiled, backed out, and Higgins offered the student ............