what he did say," replied Tommy. "Says he heard groans and felt eyes looking at him. But we had the roof searched, and found nothing. I put Hicks, the ambulance man, there instead. He hasn't any nerves."
"I beg your pardon. Doctor," said the hall nurse, from the doorway. "But—Hicks wants to see you."
"Just for a moment," a voice came from behind the nurse. "I'll go back up there, Doctor, if I've got to kick myself up, but—"
"Well?"
"Doctor, as sure as I'm a living man, something is singing on the roof."
"Singing!" said Tommy.
"Half singing, half chanting. I—I'm going back. Doctor. Nothing ain't ever scared me yet. But—it's singing 'Nearer, my God, to Thee'—not the words. Just the tune."
"Did anybody else hear it?"
"They heard something in the mortuary. They said it didn't sound exactly like singing. But I heard it as plain as I hear you, sir. It— it's horrible."
"Are the nurses still there?"
"No, sir. Miss Lewis was sent to take Miss Grimes' place, but she insisted on having her night supper first. Mr. Briggs is in the mortuary with the—you know, until she comes."
"I'll go up with you to the roof," said Tommy, and went at once.
Aggie had been getting white around the lips during the whole scene, and when Hicks said "Nearer, my God, to Thee," she almost keeled over against her pillows. The moment Tommy had gone, she burst into tears, declaring that something awful was going to happen, that being the tune they had sung at the roofer's funeral.
Tish, however, was stonily calm, although I could see she was shaken. She had got out her Irish lace, and sat making picots as if her life depended on it.
"I don't for the life of me see what you are bleating about," she snapped. "If you argue from hearing that tune that he's coming back to-night, there will be more ghosts walking that this hospital can hold. It's been sung at a good many funerals. And another thing, if he was as good as you think he was, he's sitting around with a harp, learning celestial melodies, not coming back to string up innocent corpses with roller towels, and break skylights. It's only the bad ones that aren't satisfied where they are and come back."
It is hard to say just why that line of reasoning made Aggie dry her tears, but it did, and she sat up and finished her buttermilk. It was when I was reaching her the crackers that I heard a creak, and knew that somebody had stealthily opened the door into the nurses' dormitory. Tish heard it, too, and put down her crocheting.
All our lights were on, while the hall was dark. This time we saw no candlelight, but we each felt who it was. I stepped to the door and looked out.
Miss Blake, fully dressed, was on the narrow staircase to the floor above, and at the top somebody with an electric flash was barring the way.
"Sorry, Miss," said Jacobs, the night watchman. "We have orders not to let anybody pass here to-night."
"But I must!" she pleaded. "I can't endure this suspense another moment, Jacobs! Where is Doctor Andrews?"
"On the roof. Miss Blake."
"Oh, no, not on the roof!" she cried. "Let me pass. I must pass."
"Sorry," he said, not moving. "My orders—"
Suddenly, from somewhere overhead came a woman's scream, a shrill note of horror that left my ears aching, my heart beating madly. It rose and fell and then rose again, and the silence that followed was the silence of paralysis.
Immediately after, there was the sound of scurrying feet. Tish and I never knew afterward how we got up the stairs, or were almost the first on the scene.
The hall was dark, as on the floor below, but from the mortuary a bright light streamed down the short, wide flight of steps that served as its approach.
On one side of the receiving table Tommy was standing. On the other. Miss Lewis stood, as if frozen, with one hand turning down the covering sheet. But the body on the table was not wrapped in a shroud. It was the figure of a tall man fully dressed, and with the head and shoulders tightly wrapped in what looked like a brown coat.
Tish gripped my arm, shaking so she could scarcely speak. "Johnson!" she said. "Oh, my God, Lizzie, it's Johnson!"
But it was not. When they had untied the sleeves, tightly knotted about the neck, Tommy himself gave a cry of horror.
It was Briggs, the orderly, dead about ten minutes, and with his ribs crushed in like a broken barrel.
The "carbolic case" was lying in placid peace under the table, its bandaged hands folded, its jaw relaxed, its half-shut eyes looking calmly up at the horror overhead.
Tish and I put Miss Lewis to bed that night and Tish sat with her until morning. It was dawn whep Tommy came in. They had found nothing—except one curious fact:
The brown coat that had covered poor Briggs' head had belonged to Johnson. The pockets were full of his private papers.
Chapter XIII.
Jacobs' Elevator
As I have said. Tommy came in about dawn. Miss Lewis had dropped into an uneasy sleep, and Tish was dozing in the chair beside her, Aggie was stretched out on the couch, with a cubeb cigarette burning in a saucer beside her, and was resurrecting her mother's sister again when he came in. He beckoned me out into the hall after he had told us about the coat.
"Miss Blake is ill again," he said. "The second shock, after the first, you know."
"Not seriously. Tommy?" I asked, putting my hand on his arm.
"I don't know," he said miserably. "People don't go from one fainting attack into another without—I guess you've seen how it is. Miss Lizzie. I—it would kill me if any harm came to her!"
"No harm is coming to her," I reassured him. "If the strain has had this effect on Miss Lewis, who has about the same nervous system as a cow, of course it would go hard with a finely organized girl like Miss Blake. And —don't be foolish, Tommy. No finding of surgical knives in that girl's room, or of rosettes where they don't happen to belong, is going to make her guilty of anything wrong. If she's in trouble, it's not of her own making."
He fairly put his arm around me and hugged me, to the horror of a passing nurse.
"Blessed are the spinsters!" he cried, "for they are the salt of the earth! Do you really think that?"
"I do," I said firmly. "And shame on you, Tommy Andrews, for having thought anything else. I shall stay with her for an hour or two."
"If you will," he said gratefully, and we started toward the dormitory.
On the way over. Tommy told me more clearly what had happened. The body of the "carbolic case" had been taken to the mortuary by Jacobs and Briggs, Marshall,
