Cherry Ames 24 Companion Nurse (19 page)

Weir Street where Rod was waiting for me and—well, you probably know the rest.”

“We know,” said the inspector. “Mr. Ryder, we will interrogate you later, privately. Both of you will be fl own to London, under arrest. You ‘enterprising art collectors’ can now look forward to trials and prison terms.”

The inspector asked the Americans if there were anything they wished to add to Hazard’s statements.

They did not, but Cherry had a question:

“What will become of Amy?”

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“The shopwoman’s ten-year-old daughter?” The inspector looked thoughtful. “We never suspected a child, did we? I expect that that unfortunate child will be taken away from her mother, and placed in the cus-tody of foster parents who are fi t to raise her.”

“I understand from Mrs. Kirby’s neighbors, sir,” said Sergeant Kerr, “that Amy has grandparents and an aunt, on her deceased father’s side, who are good people.” Inspector Forbes said he was glad to hear that. So was Cherry. Martha and Peter looked relieved, too.

“Another constructive fact,” said the inspector, “is that a third art theft has been prevented. I wish to thank our visitors for their role in that.” Hazard snorted. The inspector said to the guards, “Take the prisoners out.” Hazard was taken out one door, and Ryder, glower-ing at him, was hustled out the other door. Most of the detectives left except Mr. Cox and Mr. Kerr, who came to ask Cherry if she were quite all right.

“I’m fi ne again, thanks,” Cherry said. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

Inspector Forbes held out his hand to the visitors.

Cherry said, “I wish Auntie Pru could receive a medal or something else spectacular.” The inspector looked amused. “Let’s say she will receive the equivalent of an honorable mention in the newspaper reports.”

They all said goodbye. Peter escorted Martha and Cherry out of the building, and hailed a taxi. He suggested dinner together, but Martha said she and Cherry had better have a quiet dinner in their rooms, and go 174
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right to sleep. It was late, and even Peter admitted they all had had enough for one day.

“But may I meet you both tomorrow morning?” Peter asked. “Tomorrow’s my last day here.”

“It’s a date,” Cherry said, and Martha said, “Let’s not go chasing any thieves.”

The next day was sunny and fi ne. They drove up the historic rock to where Edinburgh Castle perched two hundred and seventy feet in the air. The rock fell sharply on three sides, a natural fortress. As they toured the castle, Peter paid more attention to Cherry than to the guide whom Martha Logan had engaged.

The castle had a long, bloody history, said the guide.

He took them into the stone-walled apartments where Mary, Queen of Scots, had lived, and into a very small stone room where she bore her son, James VI, who became King James I of England. They traveled still further back into time and history when they stepped into the plain, stony, little Norman chapel where Queen Margaret, who became Saint Margaret, had prayed during the wars and sieges of the eleventh century. On the altar were a few fresh roses, white and red, as if the lady herself had set them there while the castle was being captured and recaptured. Indeed, the guide said, the origins of the castle were lost in antiquity, but went back to the Bronze Age.

Then they crossed the open courtyard to visit the beautiful National War Memorial. Here, in quiet grandeur, were recorded the names of soldiers, and of

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nurses, Cherry noted, and working people, and even animals who had died in World War I in defense of their country. Feeling subdued, they went outdoors and stood near the barracks, looking down at the city. The guide pointed out to them the Royal Mile, which leads from the castle to Holyrood Palace. Cutting across the heart of Edinburgh lay Princes Street, with its elegant shops and teashops on one side; and on the other, its gardens, monuments, stately churches, and national art museums. “And there,” the guide pointed out at the far end of Princes Street, “is your hotel, at the Waverly Steps.”

They left the castle. Peter had to pack, but since Martha wanted to shop, he took her and Cherry as far as Princes Street.

Peter did not want to say goodbye. But he had to,

“Right here and now, darn it. We have to fl y back to the United States today,” he said, “if my students and I are to arrive on time for the opening of the fall semester.” He looked longingly at Cherry. “I don’t suppose you’re leaving today, too?”

Cherry smiled and shook her head. Martha answered. “No, we’re going to see a little more of Scotland, the lochs and moors and the Robert Burns country. Then we’ll fl y back to London, and from there fl y to New York. Ah—excuse me. I want to send some butterscotch to my children.” She started to move away. “I’ll join you in half an hour at our hotel, Cherry . . . . Yes, yes, I’ll be perfectly all right by myself!”

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So Cherry and Peter had a last, short walk together.

Peter unashamedly held her hand.

“For once I can’t think of an appropriate quotation,” he said. “Do you think we’ll ever meet again?”

“Well, a nurse moves around a great deal on various assignments,” Cherry said.

“Sometimes professors transfer from one college to another,” Peter said. “There are vacations—and long weekends—Wait! I haven’t your home address.” They wrote down their addresses for each other.

“Here’s hoping,” said Peter. “Here’s to travel.”

“And no more art thefts,” Cherry said.

They walked a while in silence. They reached the hotel and paused. Still Peter held fast to her hand. “I’d like to give you something to remember me by,” he said. “A souvenir bracelet—or a book of Robert Burns’s poems?”

Cherry gently wriggled her hand free. “Thanks anyway, Peter. I’ll remember you, all right, without any souvenir. Just telephone me long-distance some time and see if I don’t.”

“I will!” said Peter. “So help me, I will!”

“It’s been nice. So long for now,” said Cherry.

In case you missed
Cherry Ames, Staff Nurse
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c h a p t e r i

The Young Volunteers

in the kitchen cherry helped herself to a taste of the potato salad she and her mother had just made for the cookout. Today had been a hot, joyous Fourth of July, and by now, fi ve-thirty p.m., Cherry had worked up quite an appetite. Mrs. Ames saw her and smilingly shook her head.

“Cherry, you and your brother Charles always were great ones for ‘tasting’ every dish before it came to the table. If I don’t stop you, there’ll be a large hole in that platter of potato salad. What are we going to do with her, Velva?”

Velva, the young farm woman who helped Mrs.

Ames, laughed comfortably. “Oh, I’ll make us another batch of potato salad if we run short,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll run short on anything,” Cherry said, looking at the heaped-up platters of deviled eggs and salads and the big chocolate cake Velva had baked.

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Just looking at these made Cherry hungrier than before.

“Shall I take some of these platters out to the yard now, Mother?”

Edith Ames glanced at the kitchen clock. “Well, Charles should be back with the ice cream any minute now. Yes, take them out, dear. Velva and I still have to fi nish making the iced tea.”

Cherry fi lled a tray with as many platters as she could carry at one time, and went out of the house.

It was a big, old-fashioned house with a spacious yard and shade trees. At the rear of the yard, a safe distance away from Mrs. Ames’s cherished fl ower garden, a streamer of smoke rose from the brick grill Mr. Ames had built. He and young Dr. Dan Blake were working to get a charcoal fi re burning.

Cherry grinned at their attire. Her father sported a chef’s cap and apron. Dr. Dan wore a brightly, wildly patterned sports shirt over his trousers, probably in reaction to the whites he wore all week at Hilton Hospital. Dr. Blake was a new young M.D. from Colorado; for a year now he had been in this neighborly, middle-sized town of Hilton, Illinois. As a resident physician, he both worked and lived at the hospital, but this rather isolated him and he was a little lonesome on his fi rst job. Cherry often saw Dr. Dan outside the hospital, as well as during her duty hours on Women’s Orthopedics.

She was glad her family liked Dan, too.

“Hi, you chefs!” Cherry called.

Dr. Dan Blake turned, fl ushed from the heat of the grill. “Here, let me give you a hand—” He came to take
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her tray, and carried it to the picnic table. “Mm, look at all the home cooking!”

Cherry smiled up at him. Dr. Dan had the same dark crisp hair and vivid coloring as Cherry; in a way he looked more like her than her blond twin brother did.

“We expect you to do justice to our home cooking,” she said.

Dr. Dan smiled back. “I just hope you like the way I grill beefburgers. Of course your dad is the master chef.”

Mr. Ames shoved back his chef’s cap and mopped his forehead. “I am a real-estate man pretending to be a cook, and not doing very well at it,” he said. “Come back here, Dr. Dan. I need you.” Cherry set out the platters of food on the picnic table and returned to the kitchen to reload the tray.

When she came outdoors again, Charlie drove up and parked the car in front of the house. A gallon container of ice cream sat beside him on the front seat. He got out of the car with it and called to Cherry:

“I’m starving! When do we eat?”

“Well, Dr. Fortune and Midge aren’t here yet,” Cherry said.

“I saw Midge talking to some kids on the next block.

Maybe she’s on her way here,” Charlie said, and disappeared into the house.

Midge probably was trying to do her share, Cherry thought, in recruiting teenage volunteers to work in the hospital this summer. Extra help was badly needed in all hospitals, and especially in Hilton Hospital. It 182
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had no nursing school, hence no student nurses to help the overworked R.N.’s. Every one of its three hundred beds was now occupied, and every one of the hospital’s many departments needed helpers. The hospital’s limited budget required volunteers. With summer, most of the adult volunteers were going off on vacations with their families; they
had
to be replaced.

Last summer Hilton Hospital had tried out, in a small way, training a few junior volunteers. Midge Fortune had been one of the Jayvees then, and that was why she was such an enthusiastic recruiter now. Last summer’s experiment had shown that the youngsters could bring real help and uplifting spirits to the hospital. The program had petered out over the winter when the teenagers had been busy with schoolwork.

Well, that often happened, Cherry thought. She hoped Midge, in her enthusiasm, would not invite anyone too young. The American Hospital Association required that a junior volunteer must be at least fourteen to serve in the hospital. To be a ward aide, and work with the nurses and patients, the junior must be at least sixteen.

Cherry walked across the lawn to see whether the chefs needed an assistant. They did not; everything was ready. Mr. Ames sat down on the picnic bench and helped himself and Dr. Dan to a “sample” of potato salad, while they waited for the Fortunes.

“How’s your schedule coming along?” Dr. Dan asked Cherry. “Wish I had some way to help you.”

“Thanks. It’ll work out,” Cherry said.

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At her head nurse’s request, she had been fi guring out a temporary schedule—a schedule by which she could teach some of the incoming juniors, and still do her full share of nursing for her patients. Cherry had offered to teach, since she had already done so the previous summer.

Midge came running into the Ames’s yard. “Hi, you kids!” she said. She hugged Mr. Ames, grinned at Cherry and Dr. Dan, and popped a pickle into her mouth.

Midge was practically a member of the Ames family. Her father, Dr. Joe Fortune, had been the Ames’s doctor from the time Cherry and Charlie were born.

Midge’s mother had died when the girl was little, and she had grown up as much in the Ames’s house as in her own. She was sixteen now. She pushed her light-brown hair off her moist forehead and said:

“Whew! I got three more promises—Oh, before I forget! My father said to tell you he’s pretty tired from watching the parade with me this morning and treat-ing an emergency case this afternoon, so would you all please excuse him if he comes over later? He’s taking a nap now.”

The others nodded. Dr. Joe was not very strong.

Cherry said she had better tell her mother and Velva, so the cookout could begin now. The two chefs very seriously put the fi rst round of beefburgers on the grill.

Midge followed Cherry across the yard. “I got promises from two more girls and a boy,” Midge announced.

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Cherry smiled. “Good for you. Relax, now. You don’t have to do the whole recruiting job single-handed.” The high school and the junior high school had cooperated with the hospital in initiating the Jayvee program. Cherry did not want to defl ate Midge’s enthusiasm by reminding her that all during the last weeks of school—fi nal examinations notwithstanding—the teacher-sponsors and the Jayvee announcements on the school bulletin board had awakened a lively response. Another effective means had been that radio disk jockey’s appeal for Jayvees.

It had brought in so many immediate telephoned inquiries that the hospital switchboard had lighted up as if disaster calls were coming in. Some of the doctors and nurses did think the juniors were going to be a disaster. Some of the youngsters’ parents had their doubts, too, and parents’ written permission was needed to become a Jayvee.