Some Must Watch, Ethel Lina White [crime books to read txt] 📗
- Author: Ethel Lina White
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“Things have been most peculiar all the night, just as if someone was
working the trick from inside.” She added, with sinister meaning, “We
shall know, if I pass out. I took brandy in my tea. I wonder if it’s
that which makes me feel so dizzy?”
As she spoke, she staggered slightly, and passed her hand over her brow.
Helen stared at her, speechless with horror. In spite of the woman’s
venom, she clung to her as desperately as a drowning person clings to
his rescuer.
Although her common sense reminded her that Nurse Barker was plugging at
her alarmist policy in order to terrify her, events over which she had
no control seemed to indicate some subterranean direction of the general
withdrawal.
One after another her companions had left her. They slept, while she
remained, to watch. In the end, she would be alone.
Determined that Nurse Barker should not have the satisfaction of knowing
that she had drawn blood, she kept her head high and her lips steady.
But Nurse Barker looked at her eyes and noticed how the pupils had
swamped the iris.
Helen saw her smile, and was suddenly inflamed at reprisal.
“I can’t understand why you should grudge me my first chance of
happiness,” she said. “It’s mean. When I was hungry, it didn’t help me
to know others were hungry; too. In fact, it was worse, for I always had
bread, and could guess what it meant to those who had nothing at all.”
“Oh? So you’ve starved?” asked Nurse Barker.
“Not exactly. But I’ve gone very short, in between jobs.”
“That only proves you’re of no use. There’s a glut of unskilled labor.
You’d never be missed.”
Again Helen glimpsed the blue star of daylight shining at the end of the
tunnel.
“I wish it was tomorrow,” she sighed. “Oh, nurse, help me to come safely
through the night.”
“Why? You wouldn’t put yourself out for me.”
“I do wish I could prove it was genuine,” Helen said eagerly. “I was a
horrible little beast. But you’ve grown on me. I think I understand,
now, how your doctor felt.”
Nurse Barker listened in silence, her expression enigmatic. In the pause
the telephone-bell rang, with startling shrillness. The sound was music
to Helen’s ears, with the reminder that the Summit was still resistant
to the Hollywood tradition of the cut wires.
She rushed across the hall, her pale face suddenly vivid with color and
glow.
“You were right, as usual,” she panted. “Dr. Parry wasn’t outside, for
he’s ringing me now.”
She was so sure of hearing his voice, when she took up the receiver,
that her disappointment was acute at the sound of mincing feminine
accents.
“Is thet the Summet?”
“Summit speaking,” replied Helen dully.
The next minute, she spoke to Nurse Barker.
“The call’s for you.” Nurse Barker arose with an air of importance.
“Who is ringing me?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Unconscious of impending disaster, Helen watched Nurse Barker with none
of her usual interest.
“Nurse Barker speaking. Who is it?… Oh, is it you, dear?”
The Secretary of the Nursing-Home explained the position.
“How nice to hear your voice, dear. I’m still on duty. We’ve a rush op.,
and I’m trying to get Blake. He’s on holiday, and I’m chasing him all
over England. So, while I’m waiting I thought I’d ring you up, just in
case you hadn’t gone to bed.”
“Not much chance of that,” said Nurse Barker.
“That doesn’t sound too bright. Isn’t the case comfortable?” “Most
uncomfortable. In fact, it’s all most unpleasant and very peculiar.”
“I’m not surprised, dear. I think you ought to know that someone rang me
up and asked me the most extraordinary questions about you.”
“About me?”
Helen caught the inflection of Nurse Barker’s voice.
With a sinking heart, she listened to half of the dialogue.
“Please repeat that… Indeed. Anything else?… What? The
insolence… Who rang you up?… You are sure it was a girl’s
voice?… When? Please try to remember, because I mean to trace this
back to its source… Are you sure it was that time?… Then I
know which girl it was, for the other had left the house… Not at
all. You are quite right to let me know. Goodbye.”
Nurse Barker rang off, and looked at Helen.
“You wanted to prove yourself?” she asked. “Well, you’ve done it.
Completely. You’re a liar and a sneak. If I could save your neck by
lifting my little finger, I wouldn’t do it.”
Helen opened her lips dumbly, in an effort to explain. But her mind felt
as incapable of coagulation as a lightly-boiled egg. She could only
realize that she had alienated the defense, and that a man was prowling
outside, in the streaming darkness.
The man was still there, encircling the house. Lashed by the gale,
twigs flogged his face, like wire whips, as he stooped over the sodden
ground to examine each small basement window.
Once he thought he had found a vulnerable spot, for a casement shook
before his pressure. Inserting his pen-knife inside the frame, he hacked
away a makeshift fastening of a peg and some string, but only to meet
the resistance of an inner shutter.
The house was armed to its teeth. It was blind and impregnable as an
armored car.
Dr. Parry should have been pleased by this evidence of obedience to his
orders. He had advised the most stringent precautions. Yet, as he looked
upwards at the blank walls, seeking in vain a gleam of light from some
upper window, he felt a chill.
He had always disliked the tree-muffled isolation of the Summit,
although he was a lover of solitude.
Endowed with swift intuitions—swayed by violent likes and dislikes, he
recognized—and fought—a streak of superstition in his nature. At that
moment he distrusted the exterior of the Victorian house, whose tall
chimneys seemed to bore the ragged clouds.
Suddenly he thought of a simple way of getting into communication with
Helen. Snapping on his lighter, he searched in his pockets to find a
scrap of paper. When he had discovered an old envelope, he managed, with
difficulty, to scrawl a message upon it. Then he slipped it into the
letter-box and gave the postman’s traditional double-knock.
“That’ll bring her down, quicker than a stick of dynamite,” he thought,
as he withdrew to a position on the gravel drive which commanded a view
of the house.
As the minutes passed, however, and no signal-light gleamed from any
of the upper windows, he grew apprehensive. The lack of response was not
typical of Helen’s curious nature. With a memory of her sensational
scampers up the stairs, he knew that it would not take her long to reach
the second floor, even if she had followed his advice to sleep in the
basement.
Presently he grew tired of standing in the rain, as though he were
planted with the trees. It was evident that the Summit—following her
character of respectable widow—was not at home to stray knocks, after
dark.
He was on the point of turning away, when a light glowed in a bedroom on
the second floor. The window was closed, but not shuttered, and screened
by a light curtain of turquoise-blue.
At the sight his face lit up with welcome. Not until he was on the point
of hearing her voice again, did he realize the strength of his feeling
for Helen. The glow in his heart rose to his lips and flamed into a
smile. His lover’s rapture made the subsequent disappointment the
keener. With a shock of positive horror, he saw—thrown upon the light
screen of the curtain—a furtive, crouching shadow.
It was the head and shoulders of a man.
SAILOR’S SENSE
Outside the Summit was elemental fury; inside, the clash of human
passions. Terrified by Nurse Barker’s dark, swollen face, Helen grew
almost frantic in her efforts to conciliate her.
“Oh, can’t you understand?” she implored. “It was after the murder. We
were all worked up and jumpy. Honestly, I thought it would clear the air
if I made certain we’d got the right nurse. You see, Mrs. Oates was sure
you were an impostor.”
Her explanation only fed Nurse Barker’s anger. Encased in the frame of a
giantess was a dwarfed nature, which made her morbidly sensitive of the
impression she created on strangers.
“You tried to worm yourself into my confidence,” she declared
vehemently. “You led me on to talk of—sacred things. And then, directly
after, you rang up the Home. A dirty trick.”
“No,” protested Helen. “All this happened before our talk. I’ve been
loyal to you, ever since my promise.”
“That’s a lie. I caught you at the telephone.” “I know. But I was
ringing up Dr. Parry.”
Nurse Barker only sucked her lips together in a crooked line. She knew
that silence was the best punishment she could administer, since it kept
the girl on the prongs of suspense.
As Helen waited, fearfully expectant of the next attack, she started at
the sound of a low thud.
Her thoughts flew to the Professor. In her ignorance of the effects of
drugs, she still clung to the hope that he would become conscious in
time to control the situation. But Nurse Barker shattered her illusion,
as she broke her silence, to bark out a command.
“See if the old woman’s fallen out of bed.”
Glad to be of service, Helen obeyed—rushing up the staircase. When she
reached the landing, she checked her headlong flight, and stole
cautiously into the blue room.
Lady Warren lay huddled up in the big bed, fast asleep. Her mouth was
open and her snores were of genuine origin.
Helen looked around her, noticing that the fire was burning low. As she
carefully piled on some of the snowball coals, she was too engrossed to
hear Dr. Parry’ double-knock on the front-door.
Nurse Barker, however, started up, at the sound. Peering suspiciously to
right and left, she pushed open the swing door, and went into the lobby.
Her first glance showed her a white object, gleaming through the glass
of the letter box. Pulling it out, she examined the note with contracted
eyes. It was scrawled on the back of an envelope, which was addressed to
“Dr. Parry,” and was signed with the initials, “D.P.”
Her heart was wrung with a spasm of jealousy at this proof that Helen’s
instincts had been true. While they struggled together, Dr. Parry had
actually been outside the door, insistent and eager.
“She knew,” she muttered. “How?”.
The girl’s familiarity with the windings of love’s labyrinth was a
mystery to the thwarted woman, who, all her life, had hungered for a
clue to help her to thread the tangle. Only once had she ventured a
little way into the maze, but had never reached its heart.
But Helen knew how to draw the heart out of a man, and how to call to
him, so that—at the end of a hard day—he lost his sleep, for her sake.
Nurse Barker could appreciate the extent of the sacrifice on the part of
a general practitioner. Her eyes were like flints as she read the note,
which was obviously meant for Helen.
“Have biked over, to see how things are, for myself. Been knocking like
mad, but no luck. When you get this, open your bedroom window, and I’ll
shout up to you, so that you’ll
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