“you promised,” i reminded mr. patton, “to play with cards on the table.”
“my dear young lady,” he replied, “i have no cards! i suspect a game, that’s all.”
“then—do you need me?”
the detective bent forward, his arms on his desk, and looked me over carefully.
“what sort of shape are you in? tired?”
“no.”
“nervous?”
“not enough to hurt.”
“i want you to take another case, following a nurse who has gone to pieces,” he said, selecting his words carefully. “i don’t want to tell you a lot—i want you to go in with a fresh mind. it promises to be an extraordinary case.”
“how long was the other nurse there?”
“four days.”
“she went to pieces in four days!”
“well, she’s pretty much unstrung. the worst is, she hasn’t any real reason. a family chooses to live in an unusual manner, because they like it, or perhaps they’re afraid of something. the girl was, that’s sure. i had never seen her until this morning, a big, healthy-looking 2 young woman; but she came in looking back over her shoulder as if she expected a knife in her back. she said she was a nurse from st. luke’s and that she’d been on a case for four days. she’d left that morning after about three hours’ sleep in that time, being locked in a room most of the time, and having little but crackers and milk for food. she thought it was a case for the police.”
“who is ill in the house? who was her patient?”
“there is no illness, i believe. the french governess had gone, and they wished the children competently cared for until they replaced her. that was the reason given her when she went. afterward she—well, she was puzzled.”
“how are you going to get me there?”
he gathered acquiescence from my question and smiled approval.
“good girl!” he said. “never mind how i’ll get you there. you are the most dependable woman i know.”
“the most curious, perhaps?” i retorted. “four days on the case, three hours’ sleep, locked in and yelling ‘police’! is it out of town?”
“no, in the heart of the city, on beauregard square. can you get some st. luke’s uniforms? they want another st. luke’s nurse.”
i said i could get the uniforms, and he wrote the address on a card.
“better arrive about five,” he said.
“but—if they are not expecting me?”
“they will be expecting you,” he replied enigmatically.
“the doctor, if he’s a st. luke’s man——”
3
“there is no doctor.”
it was six months since i had solved, or helped to solve, the mystery of the buckled bag for mr. patton. i had had other cases for him in the interval, cases where the police could not get close enough. as i said when i began this record of my crusade against crime and the criminal, a trained nurse gets under the very skin of the soul. she finds a mind surrendered, all the crooked little motives that have fired the guns of life revealed in their pitifulness.
gradually i had come to see that mr. patton’s point of view was right; that if the criminal uses every means against society, why not society against the criminal? at first i had used this as a flag of truce to my nurse’s ethical training; now i flaunted it, a mental and moral banner. the criminal against society, and i against the criminal! and, more than that, against misery, healing pain by augmenting it sometimes, but working like a surgeon, for good.
i had had six cases in six months. only in one had i failed to land my criminal, and that without any suspicion of my white uniform and rubber-soled shoes. although i played a double game no patient of mine had suffered. i was a nurse first and a police agent second. if it was a question between turpentine compresses—stupes, professionally—and seeing what letters came in or went out of the house, the compress went on first, and cracking hot too. i am not boasting. that is my method, the only way i can work, and it speaks well for it that, as i say, only one man escaped arrest—an arson case where the factory owner hanged himself in the bathroom needle shower in the house he had bought with the 4 insurance money, while i was fixing his breakfast tray. and even he might have been saved for justice had the cook not burned the toast and been obliged to make it fresh.
i was no longer staying at a nurses’ home. i had taken a bachelor suite of three rooms and bath, comfortably downtown. i cooked my own breakfasts when i was off duty and i dined at a restaurant near. luncheon i did not bother much about. now and then mr. patton telephoned me and we lunched together in remote places where we would not be known. he would tell me of his cases and sometimes he asked my advice.
i bought my uniforms that day and took them home in a taxicab. the dresses were blue, and over them for the street the st. luke’s girls wear long cloaks, english fashion, of navy blue serge, and a blue bonnet with a white ruching and white lawn ties. i felt curious in it, but it was becoming and convenient. certainly i looked professional.
at three o’clock that afternoon a messenger brought a small box, registered. it contained a st. luke’s badge of gold and blue enamel.
at four o’clock my telephone rang. i was packing my suitcase according to the list i keep pasted in the lid. under the list, which was of uniforms, aprons, thermometer, instruments, a nurse’s simple set of probe, forceps and bandage scissors, was the word “box.” this always went in first—a wooden box with a lock, the key of which was round my neck. it contained skeleton keys, a small black revolver of which i was in deadly fear, a pair of handcuffs, a pocket flashlight, and my badge from the chief of police. i was examining the revolver nervously 5 when the telephone rang, and i came within an ace of sending a bullet into the flat below.
did you ever notice how much you get out of a telephone voice? we can dissemble with our faces, but under stress the vocal cords seem to draw up tight and the voice comes thin and colorless. there’s a little woman in the flat beneath—the one i nearly bombarded—who sings like a bird at her piano half the day, scaling vocal heights that make me dizzy. now and then she has a visitor, a nice young man, and she disgraces herself, flats f, fogs e even, finally takes cowardly refuge in a wretched mezzo-soprano and cries herself to sleep, doubtless, later on.
the man who called me had the thin-drawn voice of extreme strain—a youngish voice.
“miss adams,” he said, “this is francis reed speaking. i have called st. luke’s and they referred me to you. are you free to take a case this afternoon?”
i fenced. i was trying to read the voice.
“this afternoon?”
“well, before night anyhow; as—as early this evening as possible.”
the voice was strained and tired, desperately tired. it was not peevish. it was even rather pleasant.
“what is the case, mr. reed?”
he hesitated. “it is not illness. it is merely—the governess has gone and there are two small children. we want some one to give her undivided attention to the children.”
“i see.”
“are you a heavy sleeper, miss adams?”
“a very light one.” i fancied he breathed freer.
6
“i hope you are not tired from a previous case?” i was beginning to like the voice.
“i’m quite fresh,” i replied almost gayly. “even if i were not, i like children, especially well ones. i shan’t find looking after them very wearying, i’m sure.”
again the odd little pause. then he gave me the address on beauregard square, and asked me to be sure not to be late.
“i must warn you,” he added; “we are living in a sort of casual way. our servants left us without warning. mrs. reed has been getting along as best she could. most of our meals are being sent in.”
i was thinking fast. no servants! a good many people think a trained nurse is a sort of upper servant. i’ve been in houses where they were amazed to discover that i was a college woman and, finding the two things irreconcilable, have openly accused me of having been driven to such a desperate course as a hospital training by an unfortunate love affair.
“of course you understand that i will look after the children to the best of my ability, but that i will not replace the servants.”
i fancied he smiled grimly.
“that of course. will you ring twice when you come?”
“ring twice?”
“the doorbell,” he replied impatiently.
i said i would ring the doorbell twice.
the young woman below was caroling gayly, ignorant of the six-barreled menace over her head. i knelt again by my suitcase, but packed little and thought a great deal. i was to arrive before dusk at a house where there were 7 no servants and to ring the doorbell twice. i was to be a light sleeper, although i was to look after two healthy children. it was not much in itself, but, taken in connection with the previous nurse’s appeal to the police, it took on new possibilities.
at six i started out to dinner. it was early spring and cold, but quite light. at the first corner i saw mr. patton waiting for a street car, and at his quick nod i saw i was to get in also. he did not pay my fare or speak to me. it was a part of the game that we were never seen together except at the remote restaurant i mentioned before. the car thinned out and i could watch him easily. far downtown he alighted and so did i. the restaurant was near. i went in alone and sat down at a table in a recess, and very soon he joined me. we were in the main dining room but not of it, a sop at once to the conventions and to the necessity, where he was so well known, for caution.
“i got a little information—on—the affair we were talking of,” he said as he sat down. “i’m not so sure i want you to take the case after all.”
“certainly i shall take it,” i retorted with some sharpness. “i’ve promised to go.”
“tut! i’m not going to send you into danger unnecessarily.”
“i am not afraid.”
“exactly. a lot of generals were lost in the civil war because they were not afraid and wanted to lead their troops instead of saving themselves and their expensive west point training by sitting back in a safe spot and directing the fight. any fool can run into danger. it takes intellect to keep out.”
8
i felt my color rising indignantly.
“then you brought me here to tell me i am not to go?”
“will you let me read you two reports?”
“you could have told me that at the corner!”
“will you let me read you two reports?”
“if you don’t mind i’ll first order something to eat. i’m to be there before dark.”
“will you let me——”
“i’m going, and you know i’m going. if you don’t want me to represent you i’ll go on my own. they want a nurse, and they’re in trouble.”
i think he was really angry. i know i was. if there is anything that takes the very soul out of a woman, it is to be kept from doing a thing she has set her heart on, because some man thinks it dangerous. if she has any spirit, that rouses it.
mr. patton quietly replaced the reports in his wallet and his wallet in the inside pocket of his coat, and fell to a judicial survey of the menu. but although he did not even glance at me he must have felt the determination in my face, for he ordered things that were quickly prepared and told the waiter to hurry.
“i have wondered lately,” he said slowly, “whether the mildness of your manner at the hospital was acting, or the chastening effect of three years under an order book.”
“a man always likes a woman to be a sheep.”
“not at all. but it is rather disconcerting to have a pet lamb turn round and take a bite out of one.”
“will you read the reports now?”
“i think,” he said quietly, “they would better wait until we have eaten. we will probably both feel calmer. suppose 9 we arrange that nothing said before the oysters counts?”
i agreed, rather sulkily, and the meal went off well enough. i was anxious enough to hurry but he ate deliberately, drank his demi-tasse, paid the waiter, and at last met my impatient eyes and smiled.
“after all,” he said, “since you are determined to go anyhow, what’s the use of reading the reports? inside of an hour you’ll know all you need to know.” but he saw that i did not take his teasing well, and drew out his pocketbook.
they were two typewritten papers clamped together.
they are on my desk before me now. the first one is indorsed:
statement by laura j. bosworth, nurse, of st. luke’s home for graduate nurses.
miss bosworth says:
i do not know just why i came here. but i know i’m frightened. that’s the fact. i think there is something terribly wrong in the house of francis m. reed, 71 beauregard square. i think a crime of some sort has been committed. there are four people in the family, mr. and mrs. reed and two children. i was to look after the children.
i was there four days and the children were never allowed out of the room. at night we were locked in. i kept wondering what i would do if there was a fire. the telephone wires are cut so no one can call the house, and i believe the doorbell is disconnected too. but that’s 10 fixed now. mrs. reed went round all the time with a face like chalk and her eyes staring. at all hours of the night she’d unlock the bedroom door and come in and look at the children.
almost all the doors through the house were locked. if i wanted to get to the kitchen to boil eggs for the children’s breakfast—for there were no servants, and mrs. reed was young and didn’t know anything about cooking—mr. reed had to unlock about four doors for me.
if mrs. reed looked bad, he was dreadful—sunken eyed and white and wouldn’t eat. i think he has killed somebody and is making away with the body.
last night i said i had to have air, and they let me go out. i called up a friend from a pay-station, another nurse. this morning she sent me a special-delivery letter that i was needed on another case, and i got away. that’s all; it sounds foolish, but try it and see if it doesn’t get on your nerves.
mr. patton looked up at me as he finished reading.
“now you see what i mean,” he said. “that woman was there four days, and she is as temperamental as a cow, but in those four days her nervous system went to smash.”
“doors locked!” i reflected. “servants gone; state of fear—it looks like a siege!”
“but why a trained nurse? why not a policeman, if there is danger? why any one at all, if there is something that the police are not to know?”
“that is what i intend to find out,” i replied. he shrugged his shoulders and read the other paper:
11
report of detective bennett on francis m. reed, april 5, 1913:
francis m. reed is thirty-six years of age, married, a chemist at the olympic paint works. he has two children, both boys. has a small independent income and owns the house on beauregard square, which was built by his grandfather, general f. r. reed. is supposed to be living beyond his means. house is usually full of servants, and grocer in the neighborhood has had to wait for money several times.
on march twenty-ninth he dismissed all servants without warning. no reason given, but a week’s wages instead of notice.
on march thirtieth he applied to the owners of the paint factory for two weeks’ vacation. gave as his reason nervousness and insomnia. he said he was “going to lay off and get some sleep.” has not been back at the works since. house under surveillance this afternoon. no visitors.
mr. reed telephoned for a nurse at four o’clock from a store on eleventh street. explained that his telephone was out of order.
mr. patton folded up the papers and thrust them back into his pocket. evidently he saw i was determined, for he only said:
“have you got your revolver?”
“yes.”
“do you know anything about telephones? could you repair that one in an emergency?”
“in an emergency,” i retorted, “there is no time to repair a telephone. but i’ve got a voice and there are 12 windows. if i really put my mind to it you will hear me yell at headquarters.”
he smiled grimly.
