Cherry Ames 02 Senior Nurse (18 page)

guilty and vowed that she would do anything she could to recover the drug.

“Cheer up, Mom,” Cherry said finally. “I have one nice thing to tell you. There was a vacant room in Crowley and I got it for you.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Mom said, “but that drug—it is my fault—I’ve got to make up for it.” Cherry tried, on succeeding days, to lighten Mom’s terrible burden of guilt. But Mom seemed to have an obsession on the subject.

Cherry herself tried to stop worrying by watching another influx of beginning students. Spencer Hospital, like many other hospitals, now had three terms a year because of the war emergency, so that students could enter in the fall, spring, or summer. Cherry was glad and relieved to see these new seventeen- and eighteen-year old girls. She certainly could use an extra probationer on her own ward. Yet out of all this flow of nurses, Cherry saw that there were still not enough of them.

Fortunately the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps was opening the gates to nursing wider than they had ever been opened before.

Cherry went to bed early one night. It was hot. She had had a long, difficult day. Outside in the yard there were lively voices and footsteps for a while, then silence.

Yet Cherry had difficulty in falling asleep. She could not explain an uneasiness which pervaded her. When she did
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sleep, it was a heavy fitful slumber. She woke from it more tired than before. Her clock said one. She turned the pillow over, and buried her warm face in the cool linen.

The hot thick air was so still, the leaves outside hung motionless. You could hear a pin drop a block away on a night like this, Cherry thought, and drifted back to sleep.

Later on, much later on, Cherry became aware that someone was in her room. She could see a black figure outlined against the shadowy wall. Her breath came fast and hard. She wanted to scream, but she found her throat was too tightened to utter a sound.

“Sh! Don’t be frightened, it’s only me—Mildred.” She was panting as if she had been running. “I didn’t dare knock or make a sound. Don’t raise your voice.” Cherry sat up, sharply awake. “What’s happened?” Cherry could hear Mildred swallow hard before she was able to speak again. “There’s a light—in Dr.

Fortune’s lab! I saw a man silhouetted up there—just for a moment. His flashlight keeps going on and off, in the same spot. Detectives or watchmen don’t behave like that. And Dr. Fortune—well, it’s not Dr. Fortune because he’d turn on all the lights. And—and, Cherry—” She clung to Cherry’s arm with cold hands. “There’s a man watching on the north side of Lincoln. He’s hiding in the doorway. And he doesn’t look like a watchman or a detective.” She leaned against Cherry, trembling.

Cherry put her arm around the girl.

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“But, Mildred, why did you take such a risk? You left your building—he could have seen you—
must
have seen you! What a dangerous thing for you to do! He could have tried to stop you. Why didn’t you phone me?”

“I didn’t
think
of the telephone. When I saw the light all I could think of was getting to you as fast as I could.”

“But how did you get past your supervisor?”

“She doesn’t know where I am,” said Mildred. “I didn’t ask for permission—I was afraid she wouldn’t let me go. And they may leave any minute!”

“Brave girl!” Cherry whispered back. She got out of bed and found her shoes and clothes. “What are we going to do? We’ve got to let the police know. Thank goodness the F.B.I. man is over there.” Cherry suddenly stopped dressing. “Mildred, perhaps something has happened to him—he may be in danger. We mustn’t let them get away! Come on!”

They stepped softly out into the corridor. “I’m going with you,” Mildred whispered. “I won’t let you go into that dangerous place alone. Don’t argue, there isn’t time. What are you doing?”

Cherry quickly and quietly entered Gwen’s room, a few doors down, and woke her. Gwen shook the sleep out of her eyes and listened.

“Go get Ann,” Cherry said very low. “Don’t make a sound. Somebody’s up to something in Dr. Fortune’s laboratory. Give us ten minutes to get over to Lincoln.

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Then call the police. Tell them there’s a lookout on the north side door. Got it? And hurry. Mildred and I will try to stall them there one way or another until the police get here.”

“Okay,” Gwen whispered. She already had her shoes on and stood up. “But don’t get yourselves killed! Got flashlights? Here, Mildred, you take mine.” Cherry saw Gwen open Ann’s door. Cherry went to her own night supervisor’s office. It was empty. The supervisor must be making her rounds. But she could not wait for her to return. She and Mildred dashed down to Mom’s room.

Cherry gently opened Mom’s door. “Mom, wake up!” She shook her. “Mom, wake up!” The old lady blinked and raised herself on one elbow.

“Why, Cherry, honey, what do you want at this hour of the night?”

Cherry rapidly explained. “I want you to give me the key to Lincoln Hall.”

“The key to Lincoln!” Mom’s mouth stayed open.

“But the F.B.I. man—–”

“Exactly,” Cherry whispered firmly. “I’m sure something has happened in Lincoln. We’ve got to get in there somehow. You want to get the drug back, don’t you?”

“I sure do! I’d do anything to make up for my blabbing.” Mom grabbed the key from the purse under her pillow and thrust it at Cherry.

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“But what are you going to do, child? How are you going to keep them there?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Cherry. “I’ll think of something!”

Mom suddenly got an idea. “I know what! Maybe you can get past the lookout dressed as cleaning women.

There are clothes and buckets and mops downstairs,” she whispered. “For gosh sakes, be careful.”

“That’s it!” cried Cherry. “Now, not a word, Mom.” And with this word of caution, Cherry with Mildred close behind her, sped down to the basement.

There Cherry’s eyes fell on some buckets, mops, and rags. She poked around in a closet and came out with some faded old cotton dresses and aprons. The girls donned the outfits and hurried to the inconspicuous back exit. Cherry whispered:

“I think we’d better talk in loud voices all the way over, and go sailing in. You’ll see why in a minute. Come on! If only we can get in, we can worry then about what to do next. Just imitate everything I do and say. Understand?”

Out in the moonlit yard, in a direction opposite to the one Mildred had first taken, emerged two tattered blowsy figures, faces smudged. Their voices were shrill and their mop handles clattered and hanged against their tin pails, as publicly as if it were broad daylight.

They must have wakened a number of people near by.

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They also had flashlights with which they seemed to be foolishly playing, whirling the long beams conspicuously around the yard and into the darkened windows of bedrooms.

As the two cleaning women drew close to the north side door of Lincoln Hall, chattering loudly, they were careful not to turn their flashlights on anyone who might be standing in the dark doorway. There was a rustle of movement in the doorway and the two girls quickened their footsteps. They made a sudden rush up the steps, found the door locked, used Mom’s key, and hurled themselves inside.

“Whew!” Cherry whispered. She was trembling all over. She felt Mildred’s cold hand groping for hers. They walked rapidly along the dark downstairs corridor.

They reached a wall phone and Cherry looked at it longingly, but they passed on. They raced up the stairs, flashing their lights and peering closely. On the last flight, they made their steps loud and heavy and they talked loudly. They reached Dr. Joe’s floor, the fourth floor, and stopped.

Cherry could feel her heart thumping slow and heavy and hard. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The F.B.I. man was nowhere around. At the stairs she switched on, by a central floor control, all the lights of the corridor. The whole floor blazed with lights which could be seen from all over the yard, since the hall had
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front windows, here and there, between offices. Then Cherry walked down the corridor, almost dragging Mildred. Their mops and pails clanked, and their thumping footsteps echoed. But still there was no sign of the F.B.I. man. Cherry felt sure that something had happened to him.

The glass pane in the door of Dr. Joe’s laboratory was dark. The thief probably was still there. The lookout might have signaled him. But the elevator was locked, there was only one central staircase, and they had not met anyone on their way up. No, he was still in there.

“Well, what d’you know!” the black-haired cleaning woman exclaimed shrilly. “Dr. Fortune’s finally turned his light out! We won’t go in there ’cause he might of fallen asleep in there again, like he does, the old curiosity! No ma’am, we’ll stay out of Dr. Fortune’s office! But I sure hope he don’t come out here and track up our floor. We’re going to git it good and clean if it takes us all night! Don’t you forgit the janitor and Louie and Mr. Lane’re coming up to see how good we do our jobs!”

Cherry then went to a sink in the corridor and turned the tap on full flood. It sounded like activity, and it gave her a moment to plan her next move. The man in there probably would not dare to come out into the hall now—

unless he were a killer. He would not want to be waylaid by two women with heavy mops, who would later
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remember his face, and by the three men she said were coming here. He would not want to kill five people, even for the second page of that formula, if he could avoid it.

The only other way he could get out of that room now would be by rope. But a rope long enough to drop down four floors would make a huge suspicious bundle. He probably had not risked bringing anything so conspicuous with him. Lincoln Hall had no vines, no rough stones, no balconies, nothing the man could climb down on.

Cherry and Mildred had him trapped in there.

But suppose, Cherry thought, he had a gun.

Cherry again said loudly, “That Dr. Fortune! He sure does work late hours. Well, we ain’t goin’ to go in and bother him—he’s asleep for sure, in there. I hope he don’t wake up and come out here and track up our floor the minute we’ve got it clean!” Cherry abruptly turned off the water. In the sudden stillness, there was no sound from the room, no flash of light, no sound of pebbles nor a whistle from the lookout down in the yard, nothing. It looked as if the man was still in there. He surely must have heard them and their warning by now.

She and Mildred set up a great clatter with mops and pails and talk. Cherry carefully poured water beside Dr. Fortune’s door and a stream eddied through into the laboratory. Every minute or so, she and Mildred suddenly would cease their racket and listen. Still there
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was not a sound. On a humid July night like this, they could have heard the faintest footstep, any creak of floor or window, the slightest rustle of movement, either in that room or down in the yard. She wished desperately that the police would come.

“Yes, ma’am!” Cherry declared loudly, banging her mop against her pail, “the janitor and those other two ought to be here any minute to inspect this grand clean hall! It’s a shame we can’t get in to clean the rooms, ain’t it?” They clattered and shrilled on, and Cherry wondered how much longer it was safe to keep this up. Why didn’t someone come? The minutes seemed like hours. Mildred looked at Cherry beseechingly, her eyes terrified in her pale smudged face.

“Cheerio!” Cherry bawled with a grin. “How d’you like night life?” But her own hands were shaking, she was ice cold, and she was inwardly trembling with terror.

She
thought
she heard footsteps either downstairs or on the stairs. But she could not be
sure
she heard anything. Then there was a cry from the yard. Then Cherry heard men’s loud angry voices, scuffling footsteps, a heavy door banging on the north side—they must have caught the lookout! At the same moment, five policemen burst into their corridor. They looked sharply at the two bogus cleaning women and Cherry silently pointed to Dr. Fortune’s door. She and Mildred leaned against the wall and clung to each other as the police smashed
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and heaved and splintered the locked door. Just as the door fell, one of the policemen turned around.

“Get out of here fast!” he ordered them. “You might get shot up!”

Leaving their equipment where it lay, the two girls fled.

Cherry thought one wild thing as she ran. “If it’s Lex in there, I don’t want to see it!” They ran to the open north side door. There was a knot of plainclothesmen and within the tight circle Cherry glimpsed a cowering man. A detective held out a powerful arm and blocked their path.

“Names?” he demanded. He turned a flashlight onto their faces.

“Cherry Ames, Mildred Burnham,” Cherry gasped out.

“All right. Get going!”

It was a blessed relief to be out in the yard, outdoors, free again. They ran automatically for a few minutes, then they suddenly became weak and limp and could hardly walk. Somehow they dragged themselves to Crowley, and up to Cherry’s floor. Sleepy nurses’ heads stuck out of doors all along the hall.

“Ames, what happened? Look at you!”

“Are you all right, Cherry? Where were you in that dress?”

“You wakened the whole hospital! Why?”

“Mildred! Good grief, you two girls look like you’ve been through—–”

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“Please go back to your rooms, everybody!” Gwen took charge. “They’re exhausted, let them alone! You’ll hear about it in the morning.” The nurses and students who had surged out into the hall all went quietly back into their rooms. Mildred was hanging on to Cherry, shaking violently. Cherry herself was in a trancelike state.