"Fiddle!" Aggie protested feebly. "I'm not at all upset" Then she put her head back on her pillow and fainted, as Tish had arranged, with decency and order.
Well, to go on, it seemed that Tish began to lose her courage about that time, and when one of the braver nurses came running back, after a hasty look, and said that Miss Blake was right, and there was no body in the mortuary, there was almost a stampede. And then it was, I believe, that heavy steps were heard on the staircase, and it proved to be Jacobs, the night watchman.
Now, Tish was in her nightgown, and I fancy, although she never confessed it, that she fell into some sort of a panic and darted into one of the empty rooms. She herself says Miss Lewis pushed her in, out of sight, and closed the door, but Miss Lewis indignantly denies this.
"I stood inside the door, in the darkness," Tish said. "The night watchman was just outside, and I could hear everything that was said, plainly. He didn't believe the body was gone, and said so. I heard him go toward the mortuary door, and the young women followed him. I could feel a chair just beside me, and my knee was jumping again, so I sat down.
"That was when I saw I'd stepped into an occupied room. There was a man in his night clothes standing not ten feet away, in the middle of the room, and I jumped up in a hurry.
" 'Good heavens!' I said, 'I didn't know there was anybody; here I You'll have to excuse me.' "
Tish is an extraordinary woman. She was apparently quite cool, but I happened to glance at Miss Lewis, and she was pouring a small stream of alcohol into the lap of Aggie's black broadcloth tailor-made. She was a pasty yellow-white.
"The man didn't say anything, although I could see him moving," Tish went on, "I thought he was rude. I got the door open and stepped into the hall, almost into the arms of the Blake girl.
" 'Well, were you right?' I asked her.
"She nodded. 'Absolutely gone, without a trace!' she said with a catch in her voice.
'Maybe he wasn't dead,' I suggested. There's a lot of catalepsy around just now.'
" 'He was dead,' she insisted. 'Quite dead. He's been dying for a week.'
"Well, what with the watchman and lights moving around, I wasn't so nervous as I had been, and I was pretty much interested.
" There's one thing sure, my dear,' I said, 'he won't go far in that state. I'll just hobble down and get my wrapper on and we'll have a search. I stepped into that room in my nightgown and I daresay the man in there nearly died himself—of the shock.'
"The man in Iheref she said. Why, all these rooms are empty, Miss Carberry!"
We stood staring at each other.
" 'There's a man in there,' I repeated. 'He stood up and stared at me when I went in.'
"She got very white, but she walked right over to the door and pushed it open. I saw her throw up her hands, and the next minute she had fallen flat on her face in the doorway, and the night watchman was running toward us with a lighted candle."
Tish leaned over and took a drink of water.
"This bed's full of crumbs. Miss Lewis," she grumbled. "It's queer to me that the only part of this hospital toast that is crisp is the part I get in the bed!"
Tor heaven's sake, Tish," I said impatiently, "I suppose she didn't faint because there were crumbs in your bed!"
"No," Tish said, hitching herself over to the other side of the mattress. "She fainted because the body of the missing spiritualist was hanging by its neck to the chandelier, fastened up with a roller towel."
"Dead?" Aggie asked, opening her eyes for the first time.
"Still dead," Tish replied grimly.
Chapter II.
The Little Nurse
Aggie was really frightfully upset. Aggie is rather emotional at any time, and although she herself is a Methodist, her mother's only sister had been a believer in Spiritualism. (They dug her up ten years after she died, to make room for somebody else, and Aggie's mother said her hair had grown to be fully ten feet long, and was curly, whereas in life it had always been straight. We may sneer at Spiritualism all we want, but things like that are hard to account for.)
Well, of course, Aggie declared that no human hand had strung poor old Johnson to the chandelier by a roller towel around his neck, and although Tish ridiculed the idea, she had to admit that the fourth dimension had never been accounted for, and that table levitation was an accepted fact, and even known to the ancient.
We sat there gloomily enough while Miss Lewis fixed Tish's hair and massaged her knee. In the middle of the massage Tommy Andrews came in, whistling.
"Morning, Aunt Tish," he said. "Morning, Miss Aggie, morning. Miss Lizzie. How's the knee? Looks as handsome as ever."
"She's been walking on it," said Miss Lewis sourly, and giving the knee an extra jab.
Tommy gave Tish a ferocious frown over his glasses.
"Humph!" he said. "I told you to keep off it! Miss Lewis, if she is obstreperous again, just tie her down with a half-dozen roller towels."
"Roller towels!" Tish ejaculated. "Why, it was a roller towel that—that—"
"So you said," Aggie said somberly, and we stared at each other, we hardly knew why.
Tish told Tommy the whole story as he strapped her knee with adhesive plaster. He hadn't heard it, and he was as much puzzled as we were. It was Aggie who remarked afterward how his face changed when Tish mentioned Miss Blake.
"Blake!" he said, glancing up quickly, "not the little nurse with the dark hair?"
"Yes," Tish said.
"Damn!" said Tonuny. "To have left her alone, like that!" And to Miss Lewis: "Is she ill to-day?''
"She's in bed, but she's not sleeping," said Miss Lewis, with more feeling than I'd have expected. "I was going to ask you if you would see her. Doctor. Since the shake-up yesterday, we have no medical internes, and the surgical side is full up."
"She—she didn't ask for me!" said Tommy, with his brown eyes kindling. But Miss Lewis shook her head.
"She's hardly spoken at all. She just lies there with her eyes wide open and her face white, watching the door. An hour ago one of the nurses pushed it open quietly, for fear she was asleep. Miss Blake lay and watched it moving, and when Linda—Miss Smith went in, she fainted again."
Tommy took a turn up and down the room. "She's had a profound shock," he said. "I'm not afraid of it, unless—" He stopped at the window and stood looking out.
"Unless what?" said Tish, but he didn't answer. Instead, he stalked over and rang the bell.
I'll have the hall nurse relieve you. Miss Lewis," he said. "We can't leave my aunt alone, and somebody must see to Miss Blake. There's some natural explanation for what happened last night, and we must find it and tell her."
Aggie began to tell about the aunt with the hair, but before she had even buried her, the door opened and Miss Blake herself came in.
"Did you ring?" she asked. She was dead white, lips and all, with deep circles around her eyes, but her step was brisk and her voice cheerful. As Tish said, if you could only have heard her and not seen her, nobody would have believed what had happened.
Tommy gave her one look, and hauled a chair forward.
"Sit down," he ordered. "You are not fit to be on duty."
"Thank you,