Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ 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.
I had had six cases in six months. Only in one had I failed to land my criminal, and that without any suspicion of my white uniform and rubber-soled shoes. ”

“ It was broad day, but I backed away from the door and out into the wide hall. My nerves were still raw, no doubt, from the night before.
I was to meet Mr. Patton at half after seven that night, and when Mrs. Reed relieved me at seven I had 46 half an hour to myself. I spent it in Beauregard Gardens, with the dry fountain in the center. The place itself was charming, the trees still black but lightly fringed with new green, early spring flowers in the borders, neat paths and, bordering it all, the solid, dignified backs of the Beauregard houses. ”

“ Only the Reed house stood gloomy, unlighted, almost sinister.
Beauregard Place dined early. It was one of the traditions, I believe. It liked to get to the theater or the opera early, and it believed in allowing the servants a little time in the evenings. So, although it was only something after seven, the evening rite of the table crumbs began to be observed. Came a colored butler, bowed to me with a word of apology, and dumped the contents of a silver tray into the basin; came a pretty mulatto, flung her crumbs gracefully and smiled with a flash of teeth at the butler. ”

“ Looking from one of my windows I thought I saw the shadowy figure of a man across the street, and I was comforted. Help was always close, I felt. And yet, as I stood inside my door in my rubber-soled shoes, with 34 my ulster over my uniform and a revolver and my skeleton keys in my pockets, my heart was going very fast. The stupid story of the ghost came back and made me shudder, and the next instant I was remembering Mrs. Reed the night before, staring down into the lower hall with fixed glassy eyes. ”

“ She proved to be one of the dismissed servants—the waitress, she said.
“Why, Freddie!” she cried. “And Harry too! Aren’t you going to speak to Nora?”
After a moment or two she turned to me, and I felt she wanted to say something, but hardly dared.
“How is Mrs. Reed?” she asked. “Not sick, I hope?”
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She glanced at my St. Luke’s cloak and bonnet.
“No, she is quite well.”
“And Mr. Reed?”
“Quite well also.”
“Is Mademoiselle still there?”
“No, there is no one there but the family. There are no maids in the house.” ”

“ There will be some one across the street every night as long as you are in the house.”
“Have you any theory?” I asked him. He is not strong for theories generally. He is very practical. “That is, do you think the other nurse was right and there is some sort of crime being concealed?”
“Well, think about it,” he prompted me. “If a murder has been committed, what are they afraid of? The police? Then why a trained nurse and all this caution about the children? A ghost? Would they lift the carpets so that they could hear the specter tramping about?” ”

“ What was this thing that had turned a home into a jail, a barracks, that had sent away the servants, imprisoned and probably killed the dog, sapped the joy of life from two young people? What was it that Mademoiselle cried “comes up again”?
37
I looked toward the staircase. Was it coming up the staircase?
I am not afraid of the thing I can see, but it seemed to me, all at once, that if anything was going to come up the staircase I might as well get down first. A staircase is no place to meet anything, especially if one doesn’t know what it is. ”

“ Reed said,” I prompted her, “that there was an epidemic of children’s diseases. But from what you say——”
But I was not to learn, after all, for her husband opened the hall door.
“Yes, children’s diseases,” she said vaguely. “So many children are down. Shall we go up, Frank?”
The extraordinary bareness of the house had been dawning on me for some time. It was well lighted and well furnished. But the floors were innocent of rugs, the handsome furniture was without arrangement and, in the library at least, stood huddled in the center of the room. ”

“ That’s all; it sounds foolish, but try it and see if it doesn’t get on your nerves.
Mr. 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?” ”

“ Reed up above. The terror, whatever it was, seemed to lie below.
Access to the third floor was not easy. The main staircase did not go up. To get there I was obliged to unlock the door at the rear of the hall with my own keys. I was working in bright light, trying my keys one after another, and watching over my shoulder as I did so. When the door finally gave it was a relief to slip into the darkness beyond, ghosts or no ghosts.
I am always a silent worker. Caution about closing doors and squeaking hinges is second nature to me. ”

“ Over in the Smythe house the laundress, coming in late and going 48 down to the basement to soak her clothes for the morning, met the thing on the basement staircase and fainted dead away.”
I had listened intently.
“What do they think it is?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and picked up her tray.
“I’m not trying to say and I guess nobody is. But if there’s been a murder it’s pretty well known that the ghost walks about until the burial service is read and it’s properly buried.”
She glanced at the Reed house.
“For instance,” she demanded, “where is Mademoiselle?” ”

“ I could only keep a tight grip on my courage and go on. A small passage first, with whitewashed stone walls, cold and scaly under my hand; then a large room, and still darkness. Worse than darkness, something crawling and scratching round the floor.
I struck my match, then, and it seemed to me that something white flashed into a corner and disappeared. My hands were shaking, but I managed to light a gas jet and to see that I was in the laundry. The staircase came down here, narrower than above, and closed off with a door.
The door was closed and there was a heavy bolt on it but no lock. ”

“ 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 12 windows. If I really put my mind to it you will hear me yell at headquarters.” ”

“ Tonight we are on watch, and we see you breaking into the basement of the Smythe house. 58 We already know some curious things about you, such as dismissing all the servants on half an hour’s notice and the disappearance of the French governess.”
“Mademoiselle! Why, she——” He checked himself.
“When we bring you here tonight, and you ask to be allowed to go upstairs and prepare your wife, she is locked in. The nurse is missing. We find her at last, also locked away and badly hurt, lying in a staircase trap, where some one, probably yourself, has removed the steps. ”

“ Patton said. “He had twenty of the creatures in deep zinc cans with perforated lids. He says the disease is spread by fleas that infest the rats. So he had muslin as well over the lids. One can had infected rats, six of them. Then one day the Frenchwoman tried to give the dog a bath in a laundry tub and the dog bolted. The laboratory door was open in some way and he ran between the cans, upsetting them. Every rat was out in an instant. The Frenchwoman was frantic. She shut the door and tried to drive the things back. ”

“ The rats could not climb up, and beneath the steps Reed says he caught in a trap two of the tagged ones. As for Mademoiselle the thing that was coming up was her temperature—pure fright. The head you saw was poor Reed himself, wrapped in gauze against trouble and baiting his traps. He caught a lot in the neighbors’ cellars and some in the garden.”
“But why,” I demanded, “why didn’t he make it all known?”
Mr. Patton laughed while he shrugged his shoulders.
“A man hardly cares to announce that he has menaced the health of a city.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well, the rats got away, and Mademoiselle retired to her room to die of plague. She was a loyal old soul; she wouldn’t let them call a doctor. It would mean exposure, and after all what could the doctors do? Reed used his serum and she’s alive.
“Reed was frantic. His wife would not leave. There was the Frenchwoman to look after, and I think she was afraid he would do something desperate. They did the best they could, under the circumstances, for the children. They burned most of the carpets for fear of fleas, and put poison everywhere. ”

“ Luke’s man——”
3
“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 where the police could not get close enough. As I said when I began this record of my crusade against crime and the criminal, a trained nurse gets under the very skin of the soul. She finds a mind surrendered, all the crooked little motives that have fired the guns of life revealed in their pitifulness. ”

“ 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 door, but never alone. To-day I found that the back staircase is locked off at top and bottom. ”

“ Reed, “fell into that damnable trap you made in the rear staircase.”
“I locked off the staircase—but I am sorry she is hurt. My—my wife will be shocked. Only I wish you’d tell me what all this is about. You can’t arrest me for going into a friend’s house.”
“If I send for some member of the Smythe family will they acquit you?”
“Certainly they will,” he said. “I—I’ve been raised with the Smythes. You can send for any one you like.” But his tone lacked conviction.
Mr. Patton made me as comfortable as possible, and then, sending the remaining detective out into the hall, he turned to his prisoner. ”

“ There was a bowl of goldfish on a stand, and a tiny dwarf parrot in a cage was covered against the night air by a bright afghan. A white-tiled bathroom connected with this room and also with the night nursery beyond.
Mr. Reed did not come in, I had an uneasy feeling, however, that he was just beyond the door. The children were not asleep. Mrs. Reed left me to let me put on my uniform. When she came back her face was troubled.
“They are not sleeping well,” she complained. “I suppose it comes from having no exercise. They are always excited.” ”

“ Report of Detective Bennett on Francis M. Reed, April 5, 1913:
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. ”

“ And to add to their horror the sewer along the street was being relaid, and they had an influx of rats into the house. They found them everywhere in the lower floor. They even climbed the stairs. He says that the night you came he caught a big fellow on the front staircase. There was always the danger that the fleas that carry the trouble had deserted the dead creatures for new fields. They took up all the rest of the carpets and burned them. To add to the general misery the dog Chang developed unmistakable symptoms and had to be killed. ”

“ No one watched the staircase that night. I gave Mrs. Reed the opiate and saw her comfortably into bed. When I went back fifteen minutes later she was resting, but not 33 asleep. Opiates sometimes make people garrulous for a little while—sheer comfort, perhaps, and relaxed tension. I’ve had stockbrokers and bankers in the hospital give me tips, after a hypodermic of morphia, that would have made me wealthy had I not been limited to my training allowance of twelve dollars a month. ”