Hicks from the ambulance. And just a word," he said, as Briggs made for the door. "We are not talking, Briggs. Most of these men are watching for a thief. Do you understand? And I'd be glad to have your help in placing them where they'll do the most good."
Chapter X.
An Ape and some Guinea-Pigs
Miss Lewis came in a few minutes after Briggs had gone, and, closing the door behind her, looked at Tommy.
"Miss Blake is conscious," she said. "Temperature only ninety-nine, pulse a hundred and forty."
"Good!" Tommy said heartily. It was evident to us all how relieved he was. "But I don't like the pulse." He was brushing his hair back with Tish's brush. "She's had a terrific shock of some sort."
"Yes, sir," said Miss Lewis, still with her back to the door.
Tommy leaned over and kissed Tish's cheek. He was delighted at the mere prospect of seeing the Little Nurse, and showed it. "Now, try to be good until I come back, both of you," he said. "All right, Miss Lewis, we'll have a look at our patient in the dormitory."
Miss Lewis looked flushed and uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said. "Miss—Miss Blake doesn't—she has asked for Doctor Will-son instead."
"What!" said Tommy, and turned a dark red.
"She's asked for Doctor Willson," repeated Miss Lewis. "There's no mistake. I've been coaxing her for ten minutes."
"She's still delirious," Tish snapped. "And it is not necessary to coax people to retain my nephew's professional services. Miss Lewis."
"Why, that's all right," Tommy said with affected cheerfulness. "Willson's a fine chap —she couldn't do better."
"Fiddle!" Tish was angry. "Who is Wilson, anyhow?"
"Big fellow, dark eyes—very distinguished looking man," said Tommy humbly. Tommy is handsome, if being straight and slim and young count for anything, but I daresay one could hardly call him distinguished. Tish and I differ about this. "Good gracious. Aunt Tish, the girl ought to have the privilege of selecting her own medical adviser."
"Humph!"
"Suppose you go back to the dormitory. Miss Lewis," Tommy said, "and say to Miss— Miss Blake that she's made a wise choice, and I'll send Willson to her as soon as he comes in. And ask her if she will let me see her for a moment, not professionally."
Miss Lewis looked doubtful, but she went. When she came back, in five minutes, she was evidently irritated, and her cap was more than ever on one ear.
"She's sitting on the side of the bed, half dressed," she grumbled, "and she says she won't see anybody."
"Then she doesn't want—Willson?" asked Tommy, looking relieved.
"No. Says she's all right, and if people don't stop bothering her she is going out somewhere in the country where they have a dog and kittens! That's what she said! Not cat and kittens—"
Sensible girl," said Tommy, happy again. She-hasn't changed her mind about seeing me?"
"No, nor about locking the door. And what's more—" She stopped and glanced at Tommy. "I'd like to speak to you a moment in the hall, Doctor."
"What sort of shilly-shallying is that?" demanded Tish. "Can't you speak to him here?"
"I can not," said Miss Lewis, glaring back at Tish, her thumbs inside her apron belt. "It isn't considered shilly-shallying in this hospital for a nurse to make a report to a doctor, and if you'll read the rules on that door—"
"I'll speak to you in the hall," said Tommy. "Miss Lewis is right. Aunt Tish. If it's in line with what we've been discussing, I'll tell you."
But Tish isn't a woman to take chances. Afterward, she justified her looking through the keyhole on the plea that she was making a scientific theory to fit the case, and if it were not for keyholes many a murderer would have gone unhung to his grave. At the time, however, I was rather horrified.
She had plenty of time to tell me what she saw, as it happened, for Tommy did not come back until late in the afternoon, after the guinea-pig incident.
Tish says that when she'd got them in focus, as you may say. Miss Lewis was pulling something out of her sleeve. It was a knife, Tish says, with a short, thin blade that looked as sharp as a razor.
"One of the knives from the operating-room, Doctor," Miss Lewis said. "I thought I'd better not let the old ladies see it."
I daresay that was when I saw Tish's back stiffen.
"Great Scott!" said Tommy.
"I found it on the floor under her bed," Miss Lewis went on. "She didn't see me pick it up.
Tommy was staring at the blade.
"It's been used," he said. "Look at this!"
"Exactly," said Miss Lewis. "It's from the operating room, Doctor, and they don't put away their knives in that condition."
"What do you mean by that?" Tommy demanded sharply. But Miss Lewis only looked at him.
"I don't mean anything against Ruth Blake, if that's what you are indignant about," she said. "But I'm glad I found that knife. There's enough talk. Doctor."
They moved down the hall then, so that was all Tish heard. But she added, "Knife, bloodstained," to her sheet of paper.
Aggie being half drowsy and altogether sulky, we took a little time to go over the notes Tish had made, and they pointed as many different ways as a porcupine—Johnson, with his raps and his talk about coming back, taken from the mortuary and hung by his neck with a roller towel marked S. P. T.; the coincidence of Johnson's wife murdered a few years before and hung up the same way; Miss Blake wandering around at night with a brass candlestick and a blood-stained knife from the operating room, and Tommy Andrews falling or being pushed through a skylight and coming out of the excitement with a bite instead of a fracture! And then there were smaller things, though strange enough—the twisted pipe-molding and the footprints on the wall up-stairs in the room where Johnson's body was found; the loosened molding in Aggie's room and her story about the foot; the fact that Johnson was left to die in the care of a convalescent typhoid and the ward left alone for fifty-five minutes; Linda Smith and her speech to Miss Blake, not to mention the darkish bundle.
It was Tish who advanced the gigantic ape theory. She'd been reading The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and some of the clues seemed to fit, especially Tommy's shoulder. The loosened molding helped out the theory, and as Tish said, also the stringing up of Johnson's body, which, if you left out the supernatural, had apparently been done by something tremendously strong, but without intelligence.
Well, the more we thought of it the more certain we felt. The footprint part of it, too, we considered corroborative evidence, until we got the encyclopedia and learned that the great apes have the equivalent of four hands, and not a foot at all.
But
