the skylight!" babbled Ruth. "I tell you, he is dead!"
"Ruth!" begged the voice, and more sobbing, growing gradually quieter. Then silence, as if the sick girl had dropped asleep.
Tish and I slipped away, and back through the connecting door to our room. Once there, by common mute consent we left the door into the corridor open and took up such positions as enabled us to watch the people who passed along the hall. Ten minutes brought nobody. Then we heard the door open, and brisk steps coming along the hall.
"Well," said Miss Linda Smith, in her cheerful way, "Well, how's the knee this morning. Miss Carberry?"
"Better," Tish replied genially.
"That's fine," said Miss Smith and hurried along, humming a bit of a song. Tish and I looked at each other. In spite of the cheerfulness, of the eyes bathed in cold water and carefully powdered, it was Miss Smith's voice we had heard in the Blake girl's room.
But when we got to talking it over we couldn't see that what we had heard had really any importance. Miss Smith had left the girl alone in the mortuary, and was reproaching herself for having done it. That was all. But as Tish said, what did she mean by saying she was always thinking of herself? It was hardly, as Tish pointed out, an act of supreme selfishness to go down and get an armful of sheets to cover a corpse!
Tommy came in at eleven o'clock, freshly shaved and linened, and apparently as well as ever. He had been over to see Miss Blake first, but found her sleeping, which he considered a good sign. I noticed that he kept his right hand in his pocket, and did not use the arm at all. He said the shoulder was stiff, naturally, and that he must have been sleep-walking himself to get over that fence and through the skylight the way he had.
"Sleep-walking!" said Tish sharply. "Do you think that that girl was sleep-walking?"
"I certainly do," said Tommy.
"Then you are a fool," said Tish. "If she was sleep-walking, so was the burglar who took my disciple spoons last fall. Sleep-walking!"
"I wish you—"
"You're wishing me bad luck if you feel the Way you look!" said Tish shrewdly. "Now, Tommy, I'm going to get to the bottom of all this, and so are you. It will take twice the amount of effort separated as united. Don't try any evasions with me—half a truth is worse than a good lie. Now—out with it. What really happened on the roof last night?"'
"I wish I knew!" said Tommy, and looked at us gravely. "You saw what there was to see up-stairs. I happened to see Miss Blake going up the stairs with the candle, and I noticed something strange in her expression. I followed her and you followed me. She went into each room and then to the mortuary. That's proof, isn't it, that she was sleep-walking? I've worried over it all night, and I'm sure of it. Anyhow, why should she take a candle, when there is electric light everywhere? I tell you, the shock of the night before was on the girl's mind while she slept."
Tish had got out her sheet of letter paper. Well?" she said, putting something down. I saw her go into the mortuary, and I heard her talking; I couldn't make out what she said. Then there was a crash, and I ran. When I got there one of the stained glass windows was wide open, and she was climbing up the fire-escape outside. The candle had gone out. Aunt Tish, that fire-escape up there is the merest skeleton, and it is five high stories from the ground. Awake, she couldn't have done it."
"Humph!" said Tish. "It isn't hard at night, when you can't see how far it is to the ground." Then, seeing that Tommy was looking sulky, she added: "Still, you may be right."
"Up to that point," said Tommy, "I'm perfectly dear. I was out on the escape by the time she got to the roof, and I lost her there. I saw her again, however, when I climbed on the roof, and went toward her. I've heard a lot about the danger of waking sleep-walkers suddenly, and I spoke to her quietly. I said 'Miss Blake.'"
"Yes?"
"Well," he confessed, "that's about all I remember. Or no, it isn't. The girl was asleep, and not responsible. She turned like a flash when I spoke, and cried out, and—I think she threw her brass candlestick at me! Then—I seemed to be falling forward—and when I knew anything again I was in the hall below."
"Having fainted over a four-foot fence!" Tish observed sharply. "Tommy, that won't do."
"I give you my word. Aunt Tish," he said, "I haven't any idea how I got over that fence and through that skylight."
"I have!" Tish said, and put away her note-paper. We both stared at her and Tommy even smiled.
"Exactly," he said. "I've thought of that, but how do you account for the fact that not a patient left his ward or private room last night? That every servant and nurse was in his proper place? Jacobs and I took pains to find that out. And that I've got as pretty a bite in my right shoulder as you would care to see?"
"Bite!" Tish exclaimed, and reached feebly for the note-paper.
"Bite!" I repeated. "Then it must be an animal—!"
"Who knows?" Tommy said quietly. "Jacobs and I got it cauterized. I don't want the internes to get hold of the story—they're apt to talk to the nurses. I hardly know what to do next Since Mr. Harrison had the trouble last night with the two medical men, he is too busy holding down his job to have much time for anything else. If there is to be anything done, I rather think it's up to me" "It's up to us!" said Tish firmly.
Chapter IX.
Orderly Briggs and Disorderly Bates
After all, it was my suggestion that we bring in Briggs, the orderly, and ask him about the night Johnson's body was moved. Tish acknowledges this, and if she does not realize how much poor Briggs helped us in unraveling the mystery, I am not one to remind her. But Briggs was on night duty, and went to bed after carrying the breakfast trays on our floor.
Tish, however, having approved of my idea, had appropriated it as her own—which is a way most self-willed people have, and she insisted that Tommy send for him.
He came about twelve o'clock, looking rather surly, and presenting a general appearance of having his coat and trousers on over his night shirt.
"Come in, Briggs," said Tommy, when he knocked. "Sorry to wake you, old man."
"I wasn't sleeping," he replied sourly. "The noise in the place is enough to waken the dead."
"Perhaps," said Tish, "perhaps that's what ailed Johnson!"
Briggs turned quickly and looked at her. He was a tall man, with a heavy black mustache and powerful stooped shoulders. He had one drooping eyelid, that gave him an unpleasant appearance. Whether it was consciousness of this, or shiftiness, which was Tish's theory, he never looked directly at one. As Tish said, his gaze seemed to stop at your collar, but if you averted your eyes you were sure to have the feeling that he'd darted a stealthy glance at you and got away with it before you could catch him.
"No," he said, after a moment, "nothing will waken Johnson but the trumpet on the last day."
"Do you know, Briggs," Tish said coolly, "I have my own little theory about that night? You don't like Miss Smith, and you and Marshall prepared a little surprise for her.
