  As the taxi woggled downhill, Jumbo’s words pushed past the busy clicking of the meter into Sally’s weary brain. Once inside her consciousness, they rolled around like brightly colored Christmas tree balls, and butted into each other and crashed. Far down beneath the shattering concussions her mind began reverberating: “Think it over, think it over, think it over.” Twice she decided to go to Bucks and then she knew it would be hopeless. They couldn’t help if a big story broke. They didn’t make the news. They ... they were like buzzards ... and she must do something to keep them ... from.... Murdering patients.... Oh God! Oh God! ... No! ... They are wrong! She pushed her curly bright hair back from her sweating forehead, and at The Call building gave the driver the dollar, and slipped unnoticed into a crowded elevator and out again in the main hallway of the sixth floor. This wouldn’t do. Somebody might come along. She leaned against the wall for a moment, then decided to walk up to the seventh floor. There was a vacant suite of offices on the corner; perhaps if she went where there was plenty of room her brain would get ... wider.... Half way up the marble stairs began rising and hitting her in the face, and then slipping back so that she couldn’t quite reach them when she stepped. She slumped and rested. If Cub’s arms were only around her now. How many murders had there been? Four! Jumbo had said four, and the last a nurse. The night he brought the last cigarettes. She hadn’t seen him since the morning after ... the nurse.... Not since Dr. Bear began dying ... but she knew! She knew! Oh God! God! It wasn’t Cub! It wasn’t! A murderer couldn’t kiss you so that your soul ran up and spread out flat under his lips.... A murderer couldn’t look at you so that you said you were sorry, even when you tried not to be.... A murderer’s hair wouldn’t fold into little waves where it spread under the curve at the back of his neck. But how could you tell a paper that? How could you make a city editor understand ... when you had no proof ... that a man was innocent and framed? There must be some way! You had to think clearly to see it, and the place to think was upstairs She clenched her fists tightly and rose with studied steadiness. Necessity cleared the brain. Working in a newspaper office taught that the best ideas came under pressure. She had gone out on enough murder stories to know the person who worked his brain ... could beat anything ... even newspaper reporters and ... police. By the time Sally reached the door of the vacant suite, the seams of her stockings were straightened and her reddening eyes carefully and painstakingly dry. There was an air of jauntiness about her small figure. She had a head and was going to use it! Her violet eyes had changed to the deep purple and iridescent white of orchids. She closed the door and stood against it. Then her irises focused. A stooped, intent figure was silhouetted between the rows of windows and the long city vistas below. For a second her artistic sense forebade speech. Like an apple tree, gnarled and buffeted by too much winter, the thin shoulders, flat chest, beak nose, and long hands ribboned with purple veins, strained after the peering eyes which were hidden by a pair of binoculars. The dirty white hair drawn into a tightly furled knot, on the upper front of “Emma! What are you doing?” Emma wheeled around, and the binoculars fell from her hands. Sally moved with extended palms to catch them. “Oh, it’s you!” Emma’s voice was pleased and birdlike. “They don’t drop, Miss Ferguson. Mr. Bucks told me you was on vacation. Did you have a nice time, dearie?” She reached toward the long leather thong which held the binoculars around her scrawny neck and then embarrassment replaced pleasure. “What are you doing?” “Well, I tell you, dearie. Whin I can’t git inta th’ offices on six ri-away, I jes’ comes here for a little while and takes in the city ... kinda. It helps a lot, sometimes, for bein’ lonesum, Miss Ferguson.” The news-story instinct welled up. Sally eased down into a window sill. Perhaps, if you shifted the mind completely.... “Where did you get them?” “Well, dearie, it’s like this: My boy ... you know ... what was killed at the Argonah, had ’em.” Emma’s lower jaw dropped. “His buddy ... my boy had got ’em off’n a dead German General, and you kno’ what fine things Germans makes “Ain’t that sweet, dearie? And they’se bin the greates’ consterashun thu m’sorrow. Whin I gits t’thinkin’ ’bout my boy and wishin’ f’ gran’chillrin ... you kno’ ... I jes’ comes up here and takes in a few lifes.” A swell newspaper story! “Vicarious living,” Sally muttered. Emma, heard it and protested: “No mam! Nuthin’ like that! I never looks beyond Second Street, Miss Ferguson. Two blocks this side of Beeker Street is an awful nice I-talyan neighb-hood. It’s sweet t’see th’women nursin’ babies on do’steps. That’s helped me an awful lot ... sometimes.... “Wouldn’t you like to take a look, dearie?” Emma removed the thong from her neck with the care a concert master saves for his violin. Her face had now a deep, sweet warmth. Miss Ferguson had given her five dollars at Easter and at Christmas and this was a chancst.... Sally saw the look and rose. The folds of her blue crepe dress molded the curve of her slender thighs as she lifted the thong carefully over her head, adroitly around her white cowl collar, and walked toward the window. Emma stood proudly by and suggested: “If you look tword the sout’wes’ down by Sears, Roebuck, you kin’ jes’ catch a piece of the bridge ’roun’ th’corner buildin’. It’s awful prutty at sunset.” Sally, who was something of a football fan, realized these were eight-power Zeiss binoculars. They brought the city out with startling clearness. She looked for the University, and on out toward Sears, Roebuck and across the river. Then she began picking out the Italian district near Becker Street and the Speakeasy just around the corner near Pershing Road. “They’re wond-er-ful, Emma!” “Ain’t they gran’?” Suddenly she remembered about Cub, and trained the glasses upon the Elijah Wilson four blocks uphill. Cub was over there ... somewhere.... Cub was.... She began going over the building carefully. How pink the bricks were in the afternoon sun! The trees up Wilson Boulevard looked so green and feathery! How.... Her eyes found the cupola upon the top of the Administration Building. She had always wanted to see what was in that cupola! She unscrewed the lenses to their full power. They came into focus. One of the grimy windows was open. How lucky! She trained them into it. Scissored against the far white wall was Cub Sterling sitting at a small table. His hand held a hypodermic syringe. He was laughing.... God Almighty! Sally staggered as if she had been struck. Emma, supporting her, soothed: “I orta told you, dearie. If you looks too much you gits dizzy.” “Emma,” her tone was parched and pleading, “look through these at the cupola of the Elijah Wilson Hospital and tell me what you see.” The old woman took the binoculars, readjusted them ... it seemed to Sally that she used a thousand years ... and said: “Shucks, honey, I don’t see nuthin’ but a curly-headed man settin’ at a little table writin’ in a book.... H’m ... he’s awful nice lookin’!, too....” Sally snatched the glasses and spread her feet to prop herself while she projected them. Her eyes, as she stiffly moved the dials, were filmy, but within seconds she had the lenses magnifying the cupola and as a man might repeat by rote what he knew by heart, she forced her horror-stricken eyes to focus again. What they saw was Cub Sterling sitting at the same small table, a pen in his hand, writing swiftly and absorbedly in a small book. Behind him was the same big red splotch ... as if a bucket of blood But before him, upon the table, was the hypodermic syringe. Her eyes kept coming back to it over, over and over, as the eyes of a bird fascinated come back to a snake. And upon his face, as he wrote, was the awful look which she had never seen there, until he held that syringe up and laughed. As she gazed, like an echo in the distance, little things about him began to be unfamiliar. There wasn’t so much distance under his ear and collar, where she had buried her nose. And his hair wasn’t that long ... not nearly.... He had just had his hair cut ... Tuesday.... Maybe that was somebody else.... Maybe.... The glasses began slipping from her hands and while they fell, with the rapidity of a panic-stricken brain, she decided. If it was Cub and she telephoned him and told him she needed him terribly and to come right away and he came, then it wasn’t Cub. And if he didn’t come, but stayed right there in that chair all the time.... Well, you had to know ... sometime.... “Emma,” her voice was crisp and had lost its note of friendly equality, “put those binoculars to your eyes and watch that man in the top of the The bent old woman took the glasses, tremblingly, and Sally was halfway down the hall of the seventh floor before the cupola was in focus again. As she ran she debated whether to take a chance and call from the newspaper office. The open door of a suite of legal offices flashed by. She wheeled and entered. None of the stenographers was in the outer office. Steadying herself against a typewriter desk she snatched up the telephone: “Wilson 2000. Hurry, please!” She had called it two weeks ago for a news story! In response to the hospital operator’s, “Lijah-Wilsin,” she said: “Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior.” The voice died away and then came back: “Dr. Sterling’s ’phone doesn’t answer.” “Call him on the loud speaker, please. It’s terribly important.” She could hear the weary, raucous rasping, which was penetrating every corridor of the whole hospital: “Docterr Ste-earling. Doct-terr Eth-err-ridge Ste-earling-Junyior....” Every day of the month on the calendar tacked “Dr. Ethridge Sterling, speaking.” “Cub ... can you come to room 708 in The Call building, right away...?” “What? ... Salscie...? Where are you? How did you...?” A terrible calm invaded her. “It’s me, Cub! I walked out of the hospital. I had to...! Something awful...!” “What?” the rising concern of his voice seemed to be put on, and then his, “I can’t leave Father. He’s....” She braced herself for a final effort and begged: “I know. But I’m in terrible ... I need you, darling!” “But, Salscie....” “Room 708, Cub! ...” She threw the telephone from her and reeled into the hall and toward the vacant suite. Her eyes were right! Cub was not coming. Cub was ... was.... With a listlessness which portrayed great physical effort, she pushed the door open and looked toward the stooped back of Emma; then she swayed steadily toward a low Window sill and sat down. Her eyes were the color of clouds before a thunder storm and she leaned her head against the casing. Then with that funny clearness which is always As the thought began forming in her mind she revolted, and the revolt brought energy. Within half a minute after entering the room, she was at Emma’s side, begging: “He didn’t move, did he? He didn’t move, Emma?” “Not as I seen, but twicest I sneezed and los’ him, Miss Ferguson. But whin I got him back in, agin, he was settin’ jes th’ same and writin’ away ... liken he is....” Sally grabbed the binoculars and twisted them painstakingly as she placed the strap over her head. If he hadn’t moved, then perhaps ... but he might have heard the loud Speaker and gone to a ’phone while Emma was sneezing ... would the loud speaker penetrate into that cupola...? When she focused the figure again she began scrutinizing it. He had turned. Only his back and high shoulder ... but the distance from his ear to his collar wasn’t wasn’t.... Nobody but Cub had shoulders like that! Nobody except Cub sat that way.... There was only one Cub Sterling in the world She staggered back at that thought and Emma ran to her. “Don’t git yourself so excited, dearie. What’s that big-headed man to you? He ain’t nuthin’ but a doctor’s helper, doin’ his regular....” Sally kept the glasses carefully focused and said, quite calmly: “Did you ever seen him before, Emma?” “Not as I kin recklek. But thin I ain’t no jedge. I ain’t no crazier ’bout lookin’ at hossbittles thin I is ’bout bein’ in thim, Miss Ferguson. I tell you lots of my frin’s done gone up to thet hossbittle and ain’t never bin heard frum since. Ef a body’s goin’ to die, he’s goin’ die, hossbittle or no hossbittle, I says. Look at my boy en the Argonah! I recklek whin he got hurt in a football scrimpage, over at Western High and they tried to take him to....” Her chatter, like water in a distant bathtub during a bad dream, splashed past Sally’s brain. Then it ceased to register, for the man at the table had risen and was opening a drawer in the medicine cabinet. And hope sprang suddenly high in Sally’s heart. His shoulders squared and were flat! Cub stooped.... But the shape of the head and the way the hair curled at the back of the neck sickened her, horribly. It was only when he reached in a hip pocket and drew out a handkerchief ... Cub carried his in his white coat breast pocket.... Then he reached back toward the table for the hypodermic syringe, and held it up to the light again.... And his left shoulder rose ... and Sally Ferguson’s eyes floated hopelessly, the stiff tensity of her body began to relax ... she staggered forward.... Coming up the hall was the sound of running feet and they sounded like the feet of running men.... The door swung open. The note of relief in Cub Sterling’s voice as he said “Salscie!” stiffened her relaxing muscles and gave her the power to turn. Matthew Higgins had come out of the Administration Building as the long, lank body of Cub Sterling shot into a taxi at the stand. Higgins had jumped another cab. Sally Ferguson turned and swayed toward Sterling as Matthew Higgins stepped inside the door and it was he who caught the incredulity, the anguish, the blind hope of her voice. “Cub! Are you really Cub?” As Sterling reached her his voice was stern. “What is it? You must tell me,” his eyes cut into “Poison her too?” Sally Ferguson’s lids began lowering and she gasped, holding up the glasses with her ebbing strength: “Look, Cub! The cu-po-la!” The words faded with her closing eyes, and the final horror in them made Cub Sterling lay her head against his chest, place his long arms under her breasts and raise the binoculars, which were still suspended around her neck. “Lan’ sakes. It’s only a man. Jes, a doctor’s helper. And I seys....” Emma had found her voice at last, but Cub Sterling cut in: “God Almighty! Look! And tell me what you....” His words were directed toward Emma. Matthew Higgins took the glasses from Cub’s hands and Sally’s neck before Cub said, “Tell me....” The expression on his face had convinced Higgins that he saw ... something ... vile. A silence, like the high hysteria after a buoy-bell, spread over the waiting doctor. His eyes, livid with fear, turned upon the florid, gray figure of Matthew Higgins. And it was Higgins’ voice that brought Sally Ferguson out of her purple palaces. “A man with his head turned away from me ... sitting at a small table writing in a book, his left shoulder is ... he is reaching for a hypodermic syringe and holding it up and.... The murderer! ... The murderer! The crazy doctor! The other Cub Sterling!” The glasses hit the floor with a thud and Matthew Higgins started down the hallway before Cub Sterling and Sally Ferguson turned around. He must reach Snod ... reach Snod. In the same legal offices from which Sally had telephoned he grabbed the receiver and ordered: “Elijah Wilson Hospital, immediately!” “Number? Number? Number?” “Give it to me. I don’t know it.” Sally reached the doorway and sighed: “Wilson 2000.” When the connection was through Higgins rasped: “Dr. Henry MacArthur.” The nasal whine of the placid operator came back: “Dr. MacArthur’s ’phone doesn’t answer.” “Then give me Ward B, Medicine Clinic.” “We never connect ‘outside’ with the wards.” “To hell with you!” Higgins threw the ’phone from him and followed the running figure of Cub “Will, non-stop one. For God’s sake, quick!” Higgins’ head cleared. “Who is he?” Cub nodded vacantly. As they ran from the building Cub Sterling jumped in beside the driver of a cruising taxi and ordered: “Elijah Wilson. To hell with traffic lights! Five dollars if you do it in two minutes!” Matt Higgins pulled Sally Ferguson into the back seat and slammed the door. They began their wild, uphill snaking in and out. Matt Higgins said: “If we are not there in seconds, that devil will be.... Who is it, Sterling?” Cub took his panic-stricken eyes from the approaching hospital and said: “I don’t know, Mr. Immer....” “Higgins. Hired by Dr. MacArthur to ... a New York dick, doc.” Sally’s “Oh” was spontaneous. Higgins turned and smiled. “But it took a lady...!” The cab drew up at the hospital. Cub Sterling was out and up the steps before the driver applied the brakes. Matt Higgins tossed him the money “Damn it!” “Which way?” Higgins demanded. “I don’t know.... I’ve never been....” Higgins began systematically opening doors and looking for an outlet. Little streams of late afternoon sun filtered through the cracks. The hospital was deathly still. All of the people off duty were preparing to go to Rose Standish’s funeral. Sally’s hands continued wringing themselves, and she begged: “Cub, isn’t there some way ... another stairs, Cub?” He swirled without a word and ran down to the second floor again. Higgins and Sally followed, hopefully. Another stairs ... behind the pharmacy ... where Rose Standish had kissed his interne ... perhaps that went up as well as down.... They reached the door that opened onto the enclosed stairway. Cub pulled the knob savagely. The door flew open. He peered into the darkness. Matthew Higgins thick body brushed him aside. “Locked!” his discovery was like a curse. Sally stood in the doorway that led to the second floor and moaned. Fatigue. Blinding fatigue was beginning to.... Cub Sterling moved over to Higgins’ side and said “Let’s bust it!” They propped their feet upon the opposite wall and laid their shoulders against the flimsy panels. The match was out and the veins in their necks began choking them. Far down below Sally heard the clanking bell of an approaching ambulance; it hid the scrunching of the wood from her ears. She stepped onto the landing and tried to see. Before her eyes were accustomed to the dark, the heavy breathing of the two men seeped into her like a narcotic. She lay weakly against the wall. The breathing had ceased for half a second before she opened her eyes. Through the final screech of the bulging door she heard Higgins’ voice. “Footprints!” He and Cub were through the hole and halfway up the narrow, winding stairway. She could see Higgins’ match ahead as she scrambled through the jagged panelling. The steps were high and horrible. She lost all light when Higgins rounded the turn. When she staggered up, again, Higgins had his hand upon a knob and was ordering, in the heavy darkness: “Stand over there, Sterling!” and then, “It opens out and is....” He turned the knob, and a rush of yellow sunlight filled the twisting stairs. They pushed on into it. The last three steps extended past the cupola door and into the octagonal room. Higgins, Cub and Sally stood upon these steps and looked. Their gray, brown and violet eyes mirrored beside the white medicine case, a raised glass in hand, the counterpart of Cub Sterling ... gone insane. The late afternoon sun played upon the bushy hair, upon the similar, yet dissimilar faces. It caught each feature, as it catches mountain crags and emphasized it. The same white coat, the same carriage, but not the same eyes. It was the eyes which froze all three spectators into a paralyzed horror. They were the color of Cub Sterling’s, except that they centered upon his own eyes with a blistering, venomous, consuming hate, and that hate was confirmed in the crooked, violent twist of the almost rigid lips. The lips opened, the man gave his left shoulder the hysterical twist and drained the glass, but even with his head thrown back, his eyes bored into and It was Sally’s, “Peaches! I smell peaches!” that brushed past their fear. “Cyanide!” As Cub barked the word, the tall man stiffened gauntly, his eyes still intent upon Sterling’s; then his body, like a palm tree in a hurricane, cracked suddenly forward. The medicine cabinet was within ten feet of the steps upon which Higgins, Cub and Sally stood, and the man fell so that his head just brushed the railing. His hands automatically spread through the railing and caught Sterling’s knee. The fall threw his hair forward and Matthew Higgins snapped: “Who is he?” Cub’s eyes began disentangling themselves from the glassy vileness of the dead man’s stare. Matthew Higgins reached down and savagely yanked at the stiffening hands around Cub’s knees. Sterling, his own hands gripping the railing for support, endeavored vainly to make his reeling mind bring his tortured eyes into focus. Matthew Higgins threw the dead man’s hand heavily back upon the floor; the body rolled half over. Higgins rasped: “Doctor who?” Cub’s brain snapped. His eyes focused. “God! Baldy! It’s Baldy!” He lay upon the railing and carefully repeated in a dead monotone: “Baldy Rath ... bone ... Baldy....” “Who’s he?” The sentence did not cut through and Higgins bellowed into Cub’s ear: “Doctor Rathbone ... who’s he?” It reached. Cub stood straight and clipped: “Baldy Rathbone. Not doctor. Chief pharmacist of the Elijah Wilson. But why in God’s name! Baldy Rathbone!” The incredulity returned. He looked again at the inert body with its eerie features. Higgins nodded slowly.... The long hair had flopped so that the wide part again led to the shiny spot.... “The book!” When the sentence finally reached Sally’s lips, it whipped both Sterling and Higgins into action. They ran across the room and the sun took their gray and brown heads and played upon them. Through the cob-webbed windows it shone with prismatic beauty onto the now expressionless face of the dead man. A terrible desire to get away from that hideous beauty gave Sally the will to mount the remaining steps and run to the table and to Cub. Through the single open window, the late spring breeze played gently. It brought a hush to the horror-stricken air and a single fly entered, flew directly to the dead man’s face and began walking upon his crooked lips, up his relaxed cheek and around his glassy eyes. Matthew Higgins held, in his blunt hairy hand, a small stiff-backed notebook, such as the Elijah Wilson used for ward-addresses. The back was checkered and the pages ruled. It was open at a half-written page. The ink was still wet and the small, finely formed script stood out heavily. Cub read over his shoulder:
“My God! Lil!” Higgins said savagely as he dropped the book onto the plain deal table. Nobody paid him any attention. Cub Sterling said, “‘My brother?’” And Sally Ferguson picked up the book and began reading aloud from the first page. Her voice was thin and pointed and she read:
Cub Sterling had sat down, his head buried in his cupped hands. Matthew Higgins rested against a corner of the table. He was suddenly old. Lil Parkins ... for many years.... They both listened, vacant of expression, and at the same time horrified with interest, to Sally’s voice:
The utter and terrible stillness of Cub Sterling was more frightful than any words would have been. “Go on!” Matthew Higgins was relentless and Sally continued.
“Is that all?” Higgins was still relentless.... Cub Sterling’s head jerked up from his folded arms and he said: “God! It’s enough!” Sally Ferguson’s voice out into him: “There is a diary of the murders, too.” Both men rose and came to her side. Their movement disturbed the fly and he began circling around the dead man’s head. Sally’s voice drowned out his buzzing.
“My eyes ... I can’t....” Sally wailed. Matthew Higgins took the book from her hands; the fading light was eerie. Cub Sterling put his arms around the girl and drew her into his lap. She began to shiver and Higgins read:
“Crazy. Dead crazy!” Higgins’ nerves were jumpy too. “Anything else?” Cub’s voice had become relentless, now. “Yes?”
“God! It makes me sick to read it! Lil Parkins, the best woman....” “A detective you put in the bed...?” Higgins nodded flatly, and turned the pages. At the back of the book was written, upon the stiff cover: Murder Chart:
The sunset breeze wound in the window and loosened the bands of Higgins’ heated brain, and the hysterical tears of Sally Ferguson. She buried Her sobs were long and rending and they forced Matthew Higgins into instant action. He struck a match, tore the pages from the front of the blank book and put them over the match. The yellow-red flames ran up the crinkling paper as Cub Sterling’s legs began untangling themselves and he threw Sally aside. “Aw, what’s the use?” Higgins’ gray eyes shot into Cub. “He’s dead and your father’s dying. The body and the murder chart’s all we need.” The contact with Cub had revived Sally’s fight. “How can we stop The Call?” Higgins snapped around. “Who owns it?” Cub was half across the room toward Sally. He swerved. “Barton told me half an hour ago that the Attorney-General had just bought it.... Now I see....” His voice shattered. Sally ran toward him. Higgins pushed a chair under his bending legs. The fly rose from the dead man’s face and slipped with the curling smoke out of the open window toward the distant river. |
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