When he was finally in bed with two pills down him and a thermometer in his mouth Miss Hapgood spoke from the mirror—where she stood drawing his comb through her neatly matted hair.
“You have nice things,” she suggested. “I’ve worked in homes lately where I wouldn’t spit on the things they had. But I asked Dr. Cardiff to find me a case with a real gentleman—because I’m a lady.”
She walked to the window and cast an eye over the early harvest of the San Fernando Valley.
“Do you think Carlos Davis is going to marry Marya Thomas? Don’t try to answer till I take the thermometer out.”
But it was already out and Emmet was sitting up.
“That reminds me—I didn’t intend to go to bed until after Mss Halliday paid her call.”
“I gave you two sleeping pills, Mr. Mom.”
He swung his legs out of bed.
“Couldn’t you give me an emetic or something? I could get rid of the pills. Some salt and water.”
“Bring on a convulsion?” Mss Hapgood exclaimed. “In a heart case?”
“Then order some hot coffee—and dig out that silk dressing gown. Next thing I’ll forget my name.”
He did not mean this as a reproach, nor was Miss Hapgood offended for she merely shook her head, sat down and did piano scales with one hand.
“Well, I’ll sleep for a while,” Emmet decided desperately. “Mss Halliday probably won’t be here for a couple of hours. You’ll wake me up, won’t you.”
“You can’t sleep in that position.”
“I always go to sleep on my elbow.”
She collapsed him with the most adroit movement she had made during their acquaintance.
II
When he awoke it was dark outside, and in the room save for a small lamp shaded by a towel. Miss Hapgood was not in evidence but his eyes accommodated themselves to the fact that another woman in white sat in an overstuffed chair across the room—a woman from the same gigantic tribe as Dr. Cardiff. As he looked at his wrist watch to find it was half past ten the lady started awake and gave him the information that she was his night nurse, Mrs. Ewing.
“Have there been any visitors?”
“Miss Halliday. She said she’d try to drop in tomorrow. I told her you couldn’t possibly be disturbed.”
He mourned silently as Mrs. Ewing rose and ballooned into the hall; he was conscious of a conversation outside his door.
“Who is it?” he inquired. A breathless voice with a glow in it answered:
“It’s your secretary, Mr. Monsen.”
“What are you doing here at this hour?”
The two women—one monstrous, one simply a woman, reduced almost to frailty beside the other, blocked out the doorway. A failing yellow bulb in the hall still revealed Miss Trainor’s smile—repentant now, almost mischievous, but as if she was quite sure that he wouldn’t be too severe about it.
“Frankly, Mr. Monsen,” said Mrs. Ewing frankly, “—frankly I didn’t know what sort of man you’d prove to be when you awoke. And when I found the maid was out frankly I asked this—this—” she glanced at Miss Trainor as if for some final confirmation, “—this secretary, to stay until you woke up.”
Emmet’s eyes were not quite accommodated to the dim light, either in the bedroom or the hall but he could have sworn that at some point the Trainor girl winked at him.
“Well, perhaps you’ll let her go now,” he suggested.
“Good night, Mrs. Ewing,” said the Trainor girl. “I hope you have a good night, Mr. Monsen.”
As her steps faded on the stairs Emmet asked:
“What sort of person did you expect to find when I woke up?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t you talk to Dr. Cardiff?”
“No. I had only the nurse’s chart to go on—and some of it I couldn’t read, but I’ve done a good deal of work with alcoholics and junk addicts.”
Emmet was as wide awake as he had ever been in his life but this last expression conveyed nothing to him except a suggestion of some stories of Booth Tarkington about an antique dealer.
“Dope fiends, to you laymen,” said Mrs. Ewing casually.
They regarded each other and Emmet swiftly recreated her past—and a wave of sympathy went out from him toward the helpless drunkards and drug victims that she must have crushed into the ineffectuality of swatted mosquitoes.
Then he wanted to laugh but he remembered that Dr. Cardiff had told him he must not laugh very deeply or do anything to agitate his diaphragm, so he took it out in a remark:
“I have my opium cooked right in with my milk toast. And the liquor—well, what I’m sore about is that I didn’t go at it a year ago, when we had to put tablets in our drinking water. But if you can’t read the chart please call Dr. Cardiff.”
He added politely:
“You see Miss Trainor has work to do in the daytime. You wouldn’t want to have to help her with her typing, would you?”
Mrs. Ewing changed the subject firmly.
“Shall we have a bath?”
“I took a bath today. Am I running much fever for the day—I think Miss Hapgood wrote it down.”
“You’ll have to ask Dr. Cardiff those questions, Mr. Monsen.”
There was nothing much he could do about this but, concluding that his mood of irritation was his own fault, he decided it was his turn to change the subject.
“Mrs. Ewing, there’s some stuff I got in Melbourne that usually takes down these fevers,” he said. “I forgot to tell Dr. Cardiff. It’s made out of some sub-tropical herb. You’ll find it in that medical kit that Margerilla put in the closet across the hall.”
“She went off for the evening, Mr. Monsen. I’ll give you some medicine.”
“No—you can find the kit—brown leather—the stuffs in green capsules.”
“I couldn’t very well give a medication without the Doctor’s permission.”
“Find the stuff, call him up and read him the formula that’s pasted on the bottle. Or I’ll talk to him.”
She swelled near him and their eyes met. Then, with ponderous doubt, she launched herself across the hall and presently he heard her in the impromptu medicine cabinet, clicking open a case. A minute later she called:
“It isn’t here. There’s quinine, and some typhoid scrum and some first aid things, but no green capsules.”
“Bring it in here.”
“I’ve got my electric torch, Mr. Monsen, and I’ve taken everything out of the bag.”
He was out of the bed and starting for the trunk room, impatiently grabbing at a quilt in passing as he discovered that he was damp with perspiration.
“Mr. Monsen! I told you.”
“I’m sure the stuff’s here. One of those side pockets.”
There was a gentle click behind them—the significance of which neither of them realized as Emmet groped into the bag.
“Please turn that torch here—” He realized in mid-sentence what had happened: the door had swung gently closed in some casual draft. Moreover, in the full inquisitive light of the torch it was apparent that there was no bolt or handle on the inside corresponding to the lock without. Simultaneously as if from the shock the battery of the nurse’s torch expired without a sound.
III
Emmet’s mind, travelling faster than Mrs. Ewing’s, was the first to realize that they were in a situation. His second though was quite selfishly of himself: it was cold in the closet and he drew the quilt around him Arab fashion, conscious of the nurse’s heavy breathing, thinking of men in trapped submarines, and of how long the oxygen would last when consumed and expired by that pocket-cruiser of a chest.
“Cruiser” was an apt thought for within a minute Mrs. Ewing was in such active motion as to convince him that the closet was not as large as he had imagined. Whether she suspected that this was part of a plot, or whether she was already fighting for air, he could not determine in the darkness—so he merely dodged about for a minute in his dampening burnouse, trying to keep from being crushed against the wall. Until relief came with her sudden explosive announcement:
“There’s a window!”
There indeed was a window and only the blackness of the night outside had kept them from perceiving it before. The question was whether it led to a roof or opened on a sheer drop—presently the forward section of Mrs. Ewing was outside the window, trying to determine which against a sightless sky. Then she made an exultant discovery.
“I can see now,” she said. “There’s a roof below this and I can reach it.”
The spirit of the girl scouts sprung into fire somewhere in her geography, and before Emmet could even caution her she was entirely out the window and he heard a tin roof give a discouraged creak. The aperture let in a cool breeze and as Emmet crouched down on the floor Mrs. Ewing’s voice blew back into the trunk room.
“I can’t see anything.”
“The doctor will be here in the morning,” Emmet said hopefully; deciding hastily that humor was out of place, he added:
“Call for help. No—don’t call ‘Help’! Call ‘Trouble at Mr. Monsen’s’ or something like that. And say: ‘no burglars’—otherwise somebody’s liable to come over with a shotgun and spray you.”
“Trouble at Mr. Monsen’s,” she thundered obediently, “—no burglars!”
She continued without response. In the interval Emmet imagined them castaway there for a week, living off the green capsules and then the iodine from the medical kit.
Between shivers he realized that Mrs. Ewing was in conversation he could only half hear with someone below. In a moment she reported:
“It’s a man in a white coat.”
He listened.
“How’ya baby.” The voice was outside and far below.
Then the nurse:
“The kitchen door may be unlocked. If it isn’t, you come up here and I’ll give you directions.”
“Got couple drings for
