asking me whether you reached that conclusion by adding three and one, or two and two, or four and nothing. Given a certain number of clues, the logical mind often achieves remarkable results, but it is usually the trained mind. That you succeeded so well, my dear lady, I consider remarkable. Remarkable!"
"Given the same clues," Tish persisted, "you'd have reached the same result?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Well," said Tish, mildly. "It's strange that I couldn't There were a few gaps my mind wouldn't jump. And I noticed your men here seemed to feel the same way. It seemed like some distance from a roller towel in the Zoo to Johnson's brown tweed coat."
The Chief of Police looked uneasy.
"By exactly what mental process did you connect the two?" he asked, wriggling his nose.
"I didn't," said Tish cahnly. "While you and your men were measuring finger-prints and reassembling Mr. Johnson from where he'd been scattered to, I did what any person with common sense would have done, I went to Miss Blake and asked her!"
Chapter XIX.
Note by Doctor Thomas Andrews, Late Visiting Physician at the Dunkirk Hospital, and Now on the Orthopedic Staff of the same Institution, Dated Three Weeks Later, from Bermuda
Miss Lizzie's narrative stops here. My Aunt Letitia, during her convalescence in the hospital, having been discovered poring over books of aerial navigation, and having written to the Wrights, offering to turn over a second-hand automobile of standard make, a thirty-foot motor launch, and an equity in money, for one of their model biplanes. Miss Lizzie and Miss Aggie hurriedly took her to Mount Clemens for a series of baths.
"I shall take up Miss Lizzie's narrative with the story told to my Aunt Letitia by Miss Blake, now my wife. Miss Blake was young, only nineteen, and had been in the hospital only six months. Miss Smith was the head day nurse in K ward, with Miss Blake as her assistant. Miss Smith had almost completed her three years' course, and was not popular with the officers. She was, however, a good nurse, and unlike Miss Blake, was dependent on her earnings for her support.
"On Tuesday evening, trouble between the two medical internes and the hospital superintendent, Mr. Harrison, reached a climax. The three men had a wordy argument on the staircase near K ward, and Linda Smith (who was not over-scrupulous) had shut herself in a small supply room near to listen. The ward was in charge of Miss Blake, who was serving the patients' suppers from a table in the center of the long room. Behind a screen, in the second bed from the far end of the ward lay Amos Johnson, peacefully dying. Beyond him, in the end bed, lay a delirious patient named Wesley Barker, an Englishman, who had been sent in from the Zoological Garden, badly injured by the great ape, Hero, since dead.
"Barlcer was tied down. Two long towels, one over his arms and one over his legs, were knotted beyond his reach under the edge of the bed. His fractured ribs had healed, but he was still delirious. His delirium in the last day or two had taken on an acuter form, and was mania. Articulate speech had changed to noisy ape-like chatterings. He made strange facial grimaces, and being tied, had more than once tried to bite his nurses.
"Miss Blake filled a feeding cup with broth, and having attended to the other patients, went behind Johnson's screen to feed the maniac in the last bed. To her horror, the bed was empty!
"Nervous, but not excessively alarmed. Miss Blake called Linda Smith, and they searched the ward. Barker had gone, perhaps by creeping behind the heads of the beds to the doorway, and there, watching his chance, escaping to the fire-escape by a hall window near. Although only late September, it was cold, and he wore only the clothing he had worn in bed, a hospital nightshirt.
"Miss Blake wished to raise an immediate alarm, but Linda Smith refused. She was responsible: an investigation would show she had been absent from her ward without reason, and for some time. She was in disfavor already, and she could not risk losing her diploma. She had an invalid sister dependent on her. By threats and tears she made Miss Blake promise to say nothing of Barker's escape and to help her find him.
"It was almost dark by that time, and the girls were in despair. Linda Smith went down the fire-escape to the courtyard, and found the gate man staring through the bars at the river.
"I dropped a rubber sheet out the window," she said, "but I don't see it. What are you looking at?"
"The gate man pointed to the Center Street bridge, which crosses the river near the hospital. There's a woman out there in white,' he said, 'and she looks as if she might be thinking—there, look at that!'
The bridge was practically deserted. She and the gate man saw the figure move back a step or two, run forward and dive over the rail. The gate man unlocked the gate and ran out, but the toll house is at the east end of the bridge, and by the time he had raised the alarm there was nothing to be seen. Linda Smith went back to Miss Blake, and had hysteria in the K ward linen room.
Discovery meant disgrace to her, so she made up her mind not to be discovered. Barker had had no family and no friends. No one had visited him except the assistant keeper, and he had not shown any particular solicitude. Linda Smith thought she saw a way out, and half frightened, half coaxed Miss Blake into helping her. Remember, they both thought Barker was dead, and Linda Smith threatened in case of discovery, to throw herself off the roof. Miss Blake's part, therefore, was the acquiescence of a young and terrified girl, in a situation that would have shaken older and stronger nerves.
The two medical internes left at seven o'clock, as a result of the dispute with the superintendent. At ten minutes past seven, Linda Smith sent down a dismissal card for one Wesley Barker, with the forged signature of one of the departed internes. At twenty minutes past, the yellow ticket came back from the office, the ticket which would permit Wesley Barker to pass the door man and leave the hospital for good. Linda Smith destroyed it.
At seventy-thirty the night nurse. Miss Durand, was told that one of the heaviest burdens had been taken from her, and went to work cheerfully. But at ten o'clock that night Linda Smith, lying awake in bed in her room in the dormitory, saw Wesley Barker climb up the fire-escape outside her window, stopping now and then, monkey fashion, to swing out over the dizzy height by his hands.
The girl was almost frenzied. She got up and dressed and went to the roof. To her horror she found the superintendent, Mr. Harrison, smoking there and she almost fainted when she got back to her room. But the superintendent was not molested. There was no alarm.
At midnight she formed the resolution of getting Barker's clothes from the basement clothes room and putting them on the roof, in the hope that he would put them on and go away. Properly dressed, even if he went back to the Zoo, she could claim that he had been taken away by somebody in a carriage, and might still put through the deception. In any event,-his clothes could not be left there. Their discovery meant her disgrace.
She had forgotten, however, that Barker had been brought in in the ambulance, and had no clothes. Afraid to go to the basement alone, she asked Miss Durand to go to the clothes room with her, giving as an excuse that she had forgotten to send Johnson's clothes to the office, a rule in case of death, and on finding nothing there in Barker's name, she did the only thing she could think of— took Johnson's old brown suit, which, with his worn shoes and not very clean linen, was tied in a bundle with a piece of bandage and marked with the dying spiritualist's name.
Miss Durand had disappeared, carrying the bundle. Miss Smith searched the far comers of the
