“What is it?” I asked Miss Kirk. “What’s happened here?”
Miss Kirk’s face was chalk white. They were all deathly pale, the four of them, like a phantom quartet liberated by the storm.
The night nurse bumped through the swinging doors of Ward 2. “What on earth is wrong here? Oh, hello, Dr. Claude—”
“Good morning, Miss Lessinger.”
She rested a hand on the wheel chair. “Why, Norma! It’s Norma Walden!” She looked over the silent caravan. “The whole nurses’ home is here! What’s the matter? Food poisoning?”
“Hardly,” I muttered. I felt Norma’s wrist with some difficulty. It was cold and dank, the pulse thready and rapid.
The hospital was coming to life now. Shelley came pounding up in his white rubber shoes. “I just got a call from the front office that Miss Walden would be admitted. Thanks to our chess game I was up for this one, Dr. Claude.”
None of the four nurses had said a single word. I moved away from the wheel chair. “Can’t one of you tell us what’s happened here? Miss Kirk?”
She gripped the back of the wheel chair tighter, but maintained a frozen silence. I turned to the two girls in street clothes. I had seen them in the building from time to time, but I didn’t know their names.
Gently as possible I said, “Flow about you? Can one of you say something?”
Without warning, Edith Kirk crumpled into a heap behind the wheel chair. Her two companions remained quite motionless.
“Will you look to her, Shelley?” I bent over the girl in the wheel chair again. I sniffed suspiciously; there was no odor.
Shelley picked up the unconscious girl. “Miss Lessinger, open those doors, please,” he said. “Let’s push Miss Walden into the ward.”
I turned to Miss Lessinger. “It looks as if all four of them ought to be in bed. Hadn’t you better call Miss O’Neil at the nurses’ quarters — maybe she knows what’s happened. Anyway, she should be advised that some of her nurses are sick.”
I glanced around at the dispersing crowd. The two pale nurses in street clothes had disappeared. I wondered about it. I was puzzled about something else, too. One of them had carried a large beaded handbag. For some reason it jarred me.
I went slowly to my room and had a drink of brandy. That nurse had been wearing a dark tailored thing of very conservative cut. And she had carried a large beaded handbag.
I picked up the telephone and waited.
“That you, Dr. Claude?” Even the PBX operator was wide awake this morning.
“Yes. Listen, Miss Lopez. Would you wear a large, beaded handbag with a strictly tailored outfit?”
It took a moment to register, then she said, “A large beaded... Oh, no. Never. I sure wouldn’t. A paper bag would look better.”
I thanked her and hung up. I strolled back to Ward 2 and ran into Shelley. “Did you get them to bed?” I said.
“Just Miss Kirk and the Walden girl. The other two took off like zombies. Look, Dr. Claude, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get a word out of those girls to save my life. What do you make of it? I know the two we put to bed are in a state of shock. The other pair didn’t appear to be a whole lot better off.”
“Let’s go to the lab and make some coffee, Shelley; we’ll talk about it for a while.”
He watched me pour cold water into an Erlenmeyer flask and place it over a Bunsen burner. I set out some cups and paper towels.
“It’s shock syndrome all right, Shelley. That’s for sure. Severe shock. In Miss Walden’s case it’s darned near total collapse. In fact, I’d say that girl is in trouble. There’s a curious thing about all this though.”
“Yes,” he snorted. “They’re women and none of them will talk.”
“Well, I don’t mean that. Have you observed the varying degrees of shock? The girl in the wheel chair was in a virtual coma. Miss Kirk, who fainted, was the next most serious. The two in street clothes were just pale, silent and badly shaken. Indeed, they’ve more than likely gone back to the nurses’ home.”
“That’s right. What about poison — Norma Walden getting the largest amount?”
“Possible, Shelley, but most unlikely. Can you think of a poison that behaves this way — that leaves no odor — and that four of them would have ingested?”
“Mm. I won’t argue with a pathologist on that, Claude.”
I smiled at the young man’s familiarity. “No poison, no injuries. There’s only one possible answer.”
He rested his chin on his hand and stared at me.
“I think those four nurses were nearly frightened to death, Shelley.”
Norma Walden died at seven o’clock in the morning. Edith Kirk waxed catatonic, and Shelley started intravenous plasma on her. Southport Hospital was buzzing.
Dressed all in brown, Conrad reminded me of a cocker spaniel. He was nervous enough, and he all but barked in his high pitched prattle. He couldn’t sit still. A pile of papers on his desk was weighted down with an open telephone directory.
“Good morning, Dr. Claude. You were about last night, I understand, when this crazy business started.”
He had a cigarette going in an ashtray but he lit another, which afforded me a twinge of perverse amusement.
“Yes, Mr. Conrad. I was here. Is that why you wanted to see me? I have an autopsy...”
“It is. I’ve talked with the supervisor of nurses. I’ve talked to the resident. I’ve been to the nurses’ quarters. Miss Herron and Miss DeMaras left early this morning. Packed their things and left.” His voice had risen to a squeak.
“You mean they’ve resigned?”
“They’ve resigned. Dr. Claude, I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere. Not one person I’ve talked to has thrown any light on this fantastic situation. Can you tell me what in the devil happened to those nurses last night?”
“No, sir; I cannot. I can only tell you what I told Shelley. With this latest development my suspicion is reaffirmed that those four girls were frightened out of their wits. I’d say it’s a certainty now.”
“Shelley mentioned that. Frightened... You think fear did this to four adult women...”
“Not just fear, Mr. Conrad. Stark terror. I’d stake my life on it.”
Suddenly I recalled the scraps of conversation I had heard in Physiotherapy the day before. We can get it, Kirk, but do you really think we ought to do this?
And Edith Kirk’s reply: It’s all in fun. How about what she did to me?
This was it, of course. There must be an ominous link between the recent macabre events and the clandestine gathering the day before.
I owe little Norma a good one, Miss Kirk had said; a chilling statement in the light of the mysterious tragedy.
I decided to withhold all this from Conrad for the moment. I wanted to be sure of myself.
On the way back to the laboratory I remembered something else. The last thing I heard Miss Kirk say was, All right, Phyllis; you’re out. Now, who’ll ask Bleeker... Or words to that effect. Bleeker!
But Bleeker emphatically denied knowing anything about the matter. I badgered him a little, but got nowhere, except that he became irritated with me and began scratching himself, probably as a subtle means of revenge.
But I believed him. He was honest, and a crackerjack technologist, even if he did drive me crazy with his infernal scratching.
There was still the Phyllis person. She had backed out of something. I wondered what that something was.