Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ There's a little woman in the flat beneath—the one I nearly bombarded—who sings like a bird at her piano half the day, scaling vocal heights that make me dizzy. Now and then she has a visitor, a nice young man, and she disgraces herself, flats F, fogs E even, finally takes cowardly refuge in a wretched mezzo-soprano and doubtless cries herself to sleep later on.
The man who called me had the thin-drawn voice of extreme strain—a youngish voice.
“Miss Adams,” he said, “this is Francis Reed speaking. I have called St. Luke's and they referred me to you. ”

“ Patton looked up at me as he finished reading.
“Now you see what I mean,” he said. “That woman was there four days, and she is as temperamental as a cow, but in those four days her nervous system went to smash.”
“Doors locked!” I reflected. “Servants gone; state of fear—it looks like a siege!”
“But why a trained nurse? Why not a policeman, if there is danger? Why any one at all, if there is something that the police are not to know?”
“That is what I intend to find out,” I replied. He shrugged his shoulders and read the other paper:
Report of Detective Bennett on Francis M. Reed, April 5. ”

“ Poor Freddie!”
The children were adorable. I bathed and dressed them and, mindful of my predecessor's story of crackers and milk, prepared for an excursion kitchenward. The nights might be full of mystery, murder might romp from room to room, but I intended to see that the youngsters breakfasted. But before I was ready to go down breakfast arrived.
Perhaps the other nurse had told the Reeds a few plain truths before she left; perhaps, and this I think was the case, the cloud had lifted just a little. ”

“ A family chooses to live in an unusual manner, because they like it, or perhaps they're afraid of something. The girl was, that's sure. I had never seen her until this morning, a big, healthy-looking young woman; but she came in looking back over her shoulder as if she expected a knife in her back. She said she was a nurse from St. Luke's and that she'd been on a case for four days. She'd left that morning after about three hours' sleep in that entire period, being locked in a room most of the time, and having little but crackers and milk for food. She thought it was a case for the police. ”

“ Unexpectedly she went to the door opening into the hall and closed it, coming back swiftly.
“Mr. Reed thinks it is not necessary, but—there are some things that will puzzle you. Perhaps I should have spoken to the other nurse. If—if anything strikes you as unusual, Miss Adams, just please don't see it! It is all right, everything is all right. But something has occurred—not very much, but disturbing—and we are all of us doing the very best we can.”
She was quivering with nervousness.
I was not the police agent then, I'm afraid.
“Nurses are accustomed to disturbing things. Perhaps I can help.” ”

“ I knelt again by my suitcase, but packed little and thought a great deal. I was to arrive before dusk at a house where there were no servants and to ring the doorbell twice. I was to be a light sleeper, although I was to look after two healthy children. It was not much in itself, but, in connection with the previous nurse's appeal to the police, it took on new possibilities.
At six I started out to dinner. It was early spring and cold, but quite light. At the first corner I saw Mr. Patton waiting for a street car, and at his quick nod I saw I was to get in also. ”

“ If I wanted to get to the kitchen to boil eggs for the children's breakfast—for there were no servants, and Mrs. Reed is young and doesn't know anything about cooking—Mr. Reed had to unlock about four doors for me. If Mrs. Reed looked bad, he was dreadful—sunken eyed and white and wouldn't eat. I think he has killed some one and is making away with the body. Last night I said I had to have air, and they let me go out. I called up a friend from a pay-station, another nurse. ”

“ II THE Reed house is on Beauregard Square. It is a small, exclusive community, the Beauregard Neighborhood; a dozen or more solid citizens built their homes there in the early 70's, occupying large lots, the houses flush with the streets and with gardens behind. Six on one street, six on another, back to back with the gardens in the center, they occupied the whole block. And the gardens are not fenced off, but make a sort of small park, unsuspected from the streets. ”

“ Reed staring down the staircase, and me locked in a room and hanging on by my nails to peer out through a closet transom.”
“Perhaps. But how about the deadly sane young woman who preceded you? She had no imagination. Now about Reed and his wife—how do they strike you? They get along all right and that sort of thing, I suppose?”
“They are nice people,” I said emphatically. “He's a gentleman and they're devoted. He just looks like a big boy who's got into an awful mess and doesn't know how to get out. And she's backing him up. She's a dear.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Patton. ”

“ Francis M. Reed is thirty-six years of age, married, a chemist at the Olympic Paint Works. He has two children, both boys. Has a small independent income and owns the house on Beauregard Square, which was built by his grandfather, General F. R. Reed. Is supposed to be living beyond his means. House is usually full of servants, and grocer in the neighborhood has had to wait for money several times. On March twenty-ninth he dismissed all servants without warning. ”

“ Reed made a mistake, miss. You can't take a houseful of first-class servants and dismiss them the way he did—not even half an hour to get out bag and baggage—without making talk. And there's talk enough all through the neighborhood.”
“What sort of talk?”
“Different people say different things. They say Mademoiselle is still there, locked in her room on the third floor. There's a light there sometimes, but nobody sees her. And other folks say Mr. Reed is crazy. ”

“ Can you get some St. Luke's uniforms? They want another St. Luke's nurse.”
I said I could get the uniforms, and he wrote the address on a card.
“Better arrive early in the evening,” he said.
“But—if they are not expecting me?”
“They will be expecting you,” he replied enigmatically.
“The doctor, if he's a St. Luke's man——”
“There is no doctor.”
It was six months since I had solved, or helped to solve, the mystery of the buckled bag for Mr. Patton. I had had other cases for him in the interval, cases in which the police could not get close enough. ”

“ It is a common sight to see stately butlers and chic little waitresses in black and white coming out after luncheon or dinner with silver trays of crumbs. Many a scrap of gossip, as well as scrap of food, has been passed along at the old stone fountain, I believe. ”

“ Then he gave me the address on Beauregard Square, and asked me to be sure not to be late.
“I must warn you,” he added, “we are living in a sort of casual way. Our servants left us without warning. Mrs. Reed has been getting along as best she could. Most of our meals are being sent in.”
I was thinking fast. No servants! A good many people think a trained nurse is a sort of upper servant. ”

“ They want a nurse, and they're in trouble.”
I think he was really angry. I know I was. If there is anything that takes the very soul out of a woman, it is to be kept from doing a thing she has set her heart on, because some man thinks it dangerous. If she has any spirit, that rouses it.
Mr. Patton quietly replaced the reports in his wallet, and his wallet in the inside pocket of his coat, and fell to a judicial survey of the menu. ”

“ Patton's point of view was right: that if the criminal uses every means against society, why not society against the criminal? At first I had used this as a flag of truce to my nurse's ethical training; now I flaunted it, a mental and moral banner. The criminal against society, and I against the criminal! And, more than that, against misery, healing pain by augmenting it sometimes, but working like a surgeon, for good.
Second floor Plan of the Reed House ”

“ Has not been back at the works since. House under surveillance this afternoon. No visitors. Mr. Reed telephoned for a nurse at four o'clock from a store on Eleventh Street. Explained that his telephone was out of order. Mr. Patton folded up the papers and thrust them back into his pocket. Evidently he saw I was determined, for he only said:
“Have you got your revolver?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anything about telephones? Could you repair that one in an emergency?”
“In an emergency,” I retorted, “there is no time to repair a telephone. But I've got a voice and there are windows. ”

“ A lot of generals were lost in the Civil War because they were not afraid and wanted to lead their troops instead of saving themselves and their expensive West Point training by sitting back in a safe spot and directing the fight. Any fool can run into danger. It takes intelligence to keep out. ”

“ Only in one had I failed to land my criminal, and that without any suspicion of my white uniform and rubber-soled shoes. Although I played a double game, no patient of mine had suffered. I was a nurse first and a police agent second. ”

“ I finished.
“Fear of the police?”
“I—I think not. It is fear of something in the house. They are always listening and watching at the top of the front stairs. They have lifted all the carpets, so that every footstep echoes through the whole house. Mrs. Reed goes down to the first floor, but never alone. to-day I found that the back staircase is locked off at top and bottom. ”