I told Shelley about the incident in Physiotherapy.
“That’s it, Dr. Claude!” he exploded. “Of course! This was a practical joke that backfired. All we have to do is find out what it was.”
“I think I know, Shelley. Come on. Let’s go over to the O. R.”
A clipboard hung on the wall in the vestibule outside of the main operating room. I lifted it off the hook.
“Let’s see. What date was it when the girls came into Physiotherapy?”
“That would be... Tuesday, the seventeenth,” Shelley said.
“Good. All right, let’s see. This schedule of operations is sent to all departments concerned, as you know. Let’s go back to the seventeenth. Nineteen, eighteen... here it is. Here’s the answer, Shelley.”
The schedule read:
PILONIDAL SINUS
9:00 a.m. Dr. Scheer
EXPLORATORY LAPAROTOMY
11:00 a.m. Dr. Houser
AMPUTATION, HAND
2:00 p.m. Dr. Moran
“You see it?” I asked grimly.
“No.”
“The hand business, Shelley. Remember I told you Edith Kirk said Norma had put a spider on her bed — that it nearly scared her to death?”
“Yes.”
“Those girls got that amputated hand and used it on Norma Walden somehow, as a practical joke.”
“Great day in the morning!”
“Let’s call Conrad.”
Miss O’Neil finally contacted Ruth DeMaras at her sister’s home in Paragon Falls. A private investigator dug her up, and reported back to the wily Conrad. Miss DeMaras was the girl of the beaded handbag. Her companion was nowhere to be found.
Miss DeMaras reluctantly agreed to come back when she was assured there would be no trouble. So far, miraculously, news of the mysterious incidents had not trickled to the press.
We held a closed conference in the superintendent’s office. Moran, Shelley, Miss O’Neil, Miss DeMaras, Conrad and I were present.
After an hour-long conclave I walked into the laboratory looking very grave indeed. Bleeker and the green-eyed Millie were waiting to gang up on me for the story. Millie poured me a cup of instant coffee with Victorian coquetry. Bleeker pushed sugar and milk in front of me knowing full well I never use it.
“All right,” I growled. “I’ll talk. It’s pretty gruesome, though. According to Miss DeMaras, Edith Kirk and the Walden girl had been enthusiastic practical jokers since their training days, especially with each other.
“From Central Supply, Edith floated around the hospital a good deal and came across a copy of the surgery roster the day a hand amputation was scheduled. This gave her the idea for a joke to end all jokes.”
“Why did my name come into this, Dr. Claude?” Bleeker had his arms folded, probably insurance against scratching.
“All specimens removed during surgery are sent to the laboratory for pathological examination. That’s the law. Just like a biopsy. That’s where you and I would have come in, Bleeker.
“But it was simpler for Miss Kirk to slip into the utility room of the O. R. after the operation and steal the amputated hand, which lay encased in a rubber glove in a bucket. Each of the O. R. staff would think the other had sent the specimen to the laboratory. In a new hospital like this, these things can happen very easily. They can happen anywhere.
“At the nurses’ home that night, Edith Kirk decoyed her friend out of her room. With two confederates this was no problem. It’s of no real consequence, but Miss Kirk and the Walden girl had both washed their hair; they were wearing pajamas.
Shelley strolled into the laboratory and sat down looking disgusted. “Telling them about it?”
“Yes. Stick around a minute. I’ll soothe you with a chess game... Anyway, while two nurses looked on, Edith placed the hand on Norma’s pillow. Edith was, therefore, the most guilty. She loosened the overhead light so that Norma must switch on her bedside lamp and get the full shock. Which she did. Tell them, Shelley.”
The resident made a sick face. “They all hid and watched for Norma’s return. She entered the darkened room and closed the door behind her. Evidently the one street lamp over that way threw enough light so she could find her bedside lamp without any trouble. They heard the wall switch snap a few times, but of course it was ineffectual. In a few moments, Norma switched on the lamp; a line of light appeared under the door.
“Then it got rough for everybody. The minutes started to roll by and the pranksters panicked, for no sound came from inside that room. You can imagine.” There was a painful silence.
“What became of the hand, Dr. Claude?” Bleeker asked.
“After they finally opened the door and looked into the room and saw what they had done, Miss DeMaras had presence of mind — and the courage — to grab it and stick it in an old handbag she had. I wondered about the handbag that morning. She got rid of it up here after the excitement — threw it in the incinerator.”
“Will there be any charges against the girls, Doctor?” Millie asked.
“I don’t think so. I’d say there’s been enough suffering for all concerned, wouldn’t you? Mr. Conrad is praying by the hour that this doesn’t get out. I don’t think there’s a chance in a million to suppress it.
“But, good Lord! What killed Norma and turned Edith into a virtual psycopath?”
“Bleeker, have you ever come upon a severed hand, unexpectedly? On a wild stormy night? Norma Walden did; for all well ever know, inches from her nose.”
He glanced thoughtfully at his own open hand, and I saw Millie shudder.
Shelley shook his head like a bull. “It’s the most frightful thing I’ve ever heard of; do you know that? I’ve got poor Conrad eating tranquilizers like peanuts. Edith Kirk has had it, too. We just shipped her off to the state hospital at Weymouth.”
Millie adjusted a green scarf inside her lab coat and looked at me. “Dr. Claude, what was that business about the streak on Miss Walden’s mouth? And I still can’t see why they were all so badly shaken...”
I glanced at Shelley, who shrugged indifferently. “Well, Millie.” I lowered my voice. “You may as well get all of it. When the girls opened Miss Walden’s door, they found her sitting up in bed cross-legged and staring. She was holding onto the hand as if it were a chicken bone. She was eating the goddam thing.”
The Lonesome Bride
by Nelson Adcock
“Go ahead... shoot,” Short laughed. “I’ll bet you a harp and a halo I explode this thing before I die.”
1
The first thing Oliver Short saw as he stepped from the train into the blazing hot sun of San Jacinado was a man some sixty or seventy pounds fatter than himself. That put the guy at an even three-hundred. He was standing on the dry wooden train-platform, dressed in a white linen suit and a broad-brimmed panama hat, staring fixedly at Short. His face, burned a fiery red, was a jellylike thing of bulbs and pouches, and it overhung a white collar secured by a black shoestring tie. The man’s eyes, all but lost in the fat, were like tiny jet-black licorice pastiles, hard and shiny. He was about five-yards away from Short. He stood solid, feet well apart, weight thrown back on his heels, and he projected an air of authority.
Short frowned, took his eyes away from the man, and let them go down the length of the platform. Just past the center, standing by a bright red bottled-soda machine, he saw a blond woman in a white and green print dress. She was wearing sunglasses and carried a large white purse. Short hefted his overnight bag from left to right hand, gave the fat man an amused look, and walked toward the woman. At the soda-machine he paused and stuck in a dime. The bottle he got was warm as soup and he tossed it, unopened, into the slotted box provided for empties.