by Helen Wells
The musician followed her gratefully, out to the little one-passenger elevator in the stair well, and descended. Cherry went back to speak to Miss Kitty, but the sister already had gone downstairs.
Well, something had been accomplished, Cherry felt. She had cut short Miss Kitty’s useless, upsetting talk—had cut short Mr. Scott’s worrying—had defined the situation by asking for a decision. Scott would decide by morning. They could act constructively from that point. Relieved, Cherry went on downstairs.
Bébé was alone in the living room. Although Cherry was in no mood for a visitor, she could not help grinning at this fat, jolly man.
“Miss Cherry,” he said and laboriously bowed. “To see you again, it is nice.”
“Nice to see you, Mr. Bébé. Yes, I have a minute. Several minutes. Sit down and talk to me,” she said politely.
“I am so sorry I say you smell by accident. You are angry, no?”
“No.”
“I repologize. Say it, I cannot very good. My words mix up like spaghetti. I play it how sorry I am.”
He waddled gallantly to the first piano. Cherry tried not to smile.
“I play for you somesing a young man writes on a summer evening, because he was with love all filled up. You, also, are young and you, also—I hope—to have much fine love. So! I play! Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music, for the play by Shakespeare.”
He sat down and played. Spun dreams tumbled out in the airiest, laciest music. From Bébé’s pudgy fingers, elves and fairies emerged and scampered, leaves rustled and blew their fragrance, moons shimmered, young lovers sought each other in an enchanted night forest, and the little woodland animals danced for joy.
Cherry listened, transported, to the melody which soared lightly on, and rippled off to nothing under Bébé’s fingers.
“You like?”
Cherry let out a big sigh. “Ah-h! Play it again.”
“No, but—Mm—ah—boogie woogie, you like?”
“Do I? I’m mad about it! But do you play jazz?”
Bébé’s round face glowed. “In strict confidentially, Scott showed me to play it. Now! I play! Hokay! Movin’ The Boogie.”
He attacked the keyboard with the full force of his shoulders. Now the piano became, not a simulated orchestra as in the Mendelssohn overture, but an instrument in its own right: a percussion instrument. And the way Bébé played now, the piano sounded like an entirely new and different musical instrument. Bébé’s left hand beat out a powerful, rhythmic, drumlike bass, while from his right hand wound the complex threads of a plaintive melody. It was loud, strong, overpowering, all motion.
Bébé perspired and beamed. In perfect American he shouted at Cherry, “This boogie sure is movin’!”
Cherry’s feet, head, whole body kept time to the dogged rhythms. They were both thoroughly enjoying themselves. The music beat on, pounding and rushing ahead like a locomotive on a railroad track—until Miss Owens came to the door and shouted, “Cherry! Scott’s had a heart attack!”
The music stopped instantly.
“Mr. Thatch was just here, relaying Carroll’s threat again—and that did it! Scott keeled over in my office—hurry!”
Cherry and Miss Kitty raced upstairs.
In the office, the musician was lying on the floor. He was conscious and trying to clutch his left side with his right hand. His left arm lay twisted in pain. He saw Cherry and struggled to raise his head.
“No, no, lie down.” Cherry knelt beside him. “Keep perfectly still.”
His face was ashen and he was covered with clammy sweat. He tried to speak but could not. Cherry knew he was in agonizing pain—pain which pressed against his heart, wrenched through his left shoulder and crippled the whole left arm temporarily. Scott was in mental agony, too, Cherry knew, suffering a sense of impending death.
“Here, breathe this.” Hastily she dug into her pocket for the sealed glass tube of amyl nitrite, which she had carried on her person day and night ever since she became Scott Owens’s nurse. She broke the perle inside her clean handkerchief and held it with its powerful fumes under his nose. “Breathe, Mr. Scott … again … again …”
Under her breath she told Miss Kitty to get a blanket. She did not move the stricken man but covered him where he lay on the floor. Jen and Lucien and Bébé hovered in the doorway. Cherry motioned them to go away, laid her finger on her lips to signify absolute quiet.
“Breathe, Mr. Scott …”
The ashen color drained slowly away and Scott’s skin looked normal, though very white, again. Cherry wiped away the icy perspiration. She chafed his temples and wrists to stimulate circulation. His breathing was less labored now.
“Pain—” he muttered.
“Don’t speak,” Cherry said softly. “Rest.”
She sat there on the floor with him for twenty or thirty minutes, administering the nitrite once again, keeping closest watch on him. By lying completely still, he seemed to revive. A great relief broke over Cherry as the first trace of normal pink appeared again in his lips.
“Lucien! Bébé!” she called softly.
The two men appeared and Cherry directed them to carry Mr. Scott into his own room. Lucien undressed him and put him to bed. By that time Dr. Pratt had arrived.
The doctor examined the musician and then came out to talk softly with Cherry in the hall.
“He’ll be all right.”
“I gave him the nitrite, sir.”
“Good. Quick work! We might have lost him. Now see here, Cherry. He’ll feel perfectly comfortable again after adequate rest. Just try to keep a closer eye on his eating habits, working hours, exertion, to ward off any further attack. Above all, you must control any emotionally disturbing factors. Understand?”
“I understand, doctor.” Cherry added silently, “But how? How? You don’t know, Dr. Pratt, that someone is holding a gun to Scott Owens’s head.”
Cherry very nearly felt hopeless. She had thought the situation could not be worse, but now—with Scott ill from shock and worry—it had become still darker. For Scott, ill, could not act against Carroll’s threat. Scott could not even make the first, simple decision, now.
And, meanwhile, time was on the blackmailer’s side.
CHAPTER IX
Night Vigil
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT CAME SO FAST THAT CHERRY lost all track of time.
Had it been two, three, or four days until Scott revived? At any rate, he slept off all traces of the heart attack and in a surprisingly short time insisted he was “as good as new.” He seemed to be, and Dr. Pratt agreed that the musician might resume his normal schedule once more.
Scott perversely took this to mean he might go off to give a concert.
“But it’s only for one concert,” he had pleaded, “only as far as St. Louis, and besides I need every extra cent I can earn, now!”
There was no reasoning with him. It did the musician more harm to hold him back from his music than to let him travel. So once more Scott, Miss Kitty, and Cherry, laden with music scores, medicines, and the silent keyboard, climbed on a train. Cherry hoped she would see Gwen in St. Louis.
They were just outside of St. Louis, in fact its river and skyscrapers and railroad yards were already in view, when Scott complained of that warning pain in his shoulder. He had an attack on the train. Cherry and Miss Kitty rushed their charge to a hotel and got him into bed.
Cherry immediately summoned the hotel doctor, and telephoned Dr. Pratt long-distance. He gave instructions and referred Cherry to a St. Louis doctor until he himself could get there.
The concert had to be canceled, of course. More than that, a series of concerts for ensuing weeks had to be rescheduled, and many business matters rearranged.
“There’s only one way out,” Miss Kitty had said. “I’ll have to go on alone and see the various concert managers—get them to give me future dates—reorganize the notices and advertising—” She sighed. “The Carroll matter will just have to wait, too. I’m powerl
ess without Scott.” She asked Cherry earnestly, “Cherry, do you think you can manage if I leave you here alone with Scott? I’ll phone Dr. Pratt to hurry him along. You know what to do in the meantime.”
“I can manage. I have this doctor here, and a nurse friend who’ll help me, I hope. I’ll have to manage, Miss Kitty. Mr. Scott must not be moved.”
So Cherry was left alone in a hotel suite with her patient. She immediately telephoned Gwen.
“Of course I’ll be your relief nurse!” Gwen said. “I’ll come downtown right away!”
Gwen came faithfully every afternoon, to let Cherry snatch a nap or take a walk. The two friends did not manage much visiting, at this rate. Cherry was, most of the time, left alone with Scott Owens.
She was very careful to be circumspect, and not give busybodies the slightest excuse for gossip. She wore her white uniform and regulation white linen cap while nursing in the suite of rooms, but not in the hotel corridor or in the public hotel lobby. That would have been conspicuous and therefore in bad taste. She ate her meals in her own room, not in her patient’s room. And whenever a question of personal conduct arose, Cherry asked herself, “How should a nurse behave in order to honor her profession?”
There were plenty of people around to notice whether the nurse bore herself with dignity or not. The presence of this famous musician drew crowds like a magnet: newspapermen—musicians and music lovers—several personal friends—and just curious celebrity hunters. They kept Cherry busy—too busy, taking precious time away from her care of the sick man. She had to protect her patient and herself from these intruders. Yet she dared not offend any of them. She was her patient’s personal ambassador, in a way. Cherry began to realize what extraordinary tact a private duty nurse must exercise. Hastily she worked out a protocol.
To the newspapermen who wanted a daily bulletin on Owens’s recovery, Cherry promised to leave word with the desk clerk.
To Scott’s personal friends and fellow musicians, Cherry said, “As soon as the doctor gives his permission for our patient to have visitors I’ll leave a little flag outside the door, and you may come in. If there’s no flag, please don’t ring. Because, you see, Mr. Scott would worry if he thought his friends were being turned away. And he insists on an explanation of every sound—who’s at the door, who telephoned, and it ruins his rest.”
To the idly curious, Cherry said, “Go away!” And she left instructions with the hotel management not to give out the number of Mr. Owens’s room.
Cherry faced other difficulties in the actual nursing itself. Accustomed to the facilities of a hospital or at least of a home, here she had nothing to work with except the contents of her small kit and her wits. The hotel bed in which the helpless musician lay was low and broad, so that Cherry had to lean over uncomfortably dozens of times a day. The bathroom was not easy of access. The hotel kitchen sent up elaborate dishes which the patient could not eat.
Cherry summoned up her ingenuity and found what solutions she could. She and Gwen put blocks under the bed, raised it higher, and that put a stop to her backaches. Unfortunately, as Gwen remarked, the location of the bathroom could not be changed, so Cherry had to endure many extra steps, without complaint. She did manage special invalid cookery, using remembered school studies in nutrition and an electric chafing dish which Gwen’s aunt contributed.
“It’s lonely going,” Cherry told the redhead, “left in this impersonal hotel room alone with a sick and sometimes delirious man. Thank goodness, you pop in.”
“You have the doctor, the bellboy, and the chambermaid,” Gwen dryly pointed out.
“Yes, for about an hour a day. If it weren’t for you, I think I’d forget how to speak English!”
Dr. Pratt traveled to see the musician, bringing advice, nursing equipment, and a little more companionship for the stranded nurse. After the doctor left, it was less lonely for Cherry, for Scott Owens began to talk.
But it was vague, rambling talk, mostly about the threat of blackmail which hung over him. Sometimes Scott was delirious and talked mistily of his past.
“He said he’d forgiven me!” he cried out weakly one night. “Matthew said so!”
Matthew, thought Cherry. Uncle Matthew who must never be mentioned. What did a dead man have to do with this present trouble?
And once, while Cherry was feeding him, the pianist stared at her with stark eyes and said distinctly, “Prison—a number in prison—that’s what it was like—”
And one night he screamed, “The box! The papers in the box in the vault! I must have them with me! Go get them for me! I want them with me!”—screamed until Cherry had to hold him down and give him a sedative.
These things unnerved her, particularly at night. One never knew what a delirious patient might try to do—suicide, or attack the nurse, or try to flee. “Such things don’t occur often,” Gwen reminded her. But she agreed that Cherry had better not go to bed at night, with her patient in such a state. Cherry kept fourteen-, eighteen-, and twenty-hour watches, all through the long nights. She grew very tired.
Daytimes, Scott was more lucid. He talked reasonably, if weakly, about his worries. “I’ve got to get well and get up and take care of that nasty business,” he fretted.
“You won’t get well in this frame of mind,” Cherry said truthfully. “If you would just stop thinking about it until you are able to cope with it,” she urged.
Scott’s improvement was very slow. Cherry was troubled for her patient. She tried all the techniques she could think of to soothe him mentally, to help him sleep, to fight back the causes of his delirium.
She also was careful about what not to do. Scott’s sense of hearing was painfully acute; even when well, his nerves were jumpy. So Cherry did not permit herself to do any annoying shuffling, or clearing her throat, or fussing around the room, or banging, or bumping against his bed. She disciplined herself to the art of sitting perfectly quiet, when not actively at work, reading or mending without making any rustling sounds, without rocking or squeaking in her chair. She avoided continuously, nervously, using her hands. She abandoned a pair of shoes that squeaked for a lighter-weight pair with rubber heels. She kept her voice velvety. Small things, and difficult for a girl bouncing with exuberance, but her efforts at repose were repaid by Scott’s quieted nerves.
Cherry also made it her business, as a good nurse, to notice what things annoyed her patient, and shielded him from them. A window shade softly blowing back and forth, the drip of a faucet, a drawer left standing open—such things magnified into annoyances in a sick person’s mind. Cherry was quick to correct them before Scott had a chance to become annoyed.
The sick man’s day had to be filled somehow, but he was much too ill to read, play cards, or listen for long to the radio. Cherry entertained him by talking with him. She discovered that conversation was still another very important technique of the private duty nurse. She drew on her fund of education, recalled her Army experiences, and wished that she had kept up more on reading. For her patient was a brilliant man, and he demanded that his nurse, who was his constant companion, have a well-stocked mind. Cherry sensed, too, when to let her patient do most of the talking, and when to insist on a complete though friendly silence.
There was also the problem of how to handle this nervous and irritable patient, making him comfortable without continually annoying him with, “Are you comfortable? Do you want a drink of water? Are you warm enough?” Cherry developed a sixth sense about what the invalid wanted, before he himself knew he wanted it. She did not bully Scott into enjoying “his delicious broth” when she had to coax it down spoonful by spoonful. She was pleasant but not infuriatingly cheerful. She avoided ill-timed mirth, and the sort of briskness that would wear out a well person. When Scott began to think he would be more comfortable lying on his other side, Cherry was already turning him, and slipping a fresh, cool pillow under his head.
There was the problem of wakeful, endless nights for Scott, and how to induce sleep. Cherry t
ried warm drinks before bedtime, a hot-water bottle on Scott’s feet. She tried music, via radio, and chose musical selections for what mood each would evoke in her patient.
Cherry could have used some sleep herself. Gwen relieved her only a couple of hours in the afternoon, for she had other duties, and Cherry was growing dangerously tired. Large amounts of black coffee kept her awake through the long night vigils.
Gwen warned her, “You’re living on borrowed energy, you’ll pay up for this some time in the future.”
“Well, if I were in Mr. Owens’s own city, I could notify Dr. Pratt that I’m growing overtired and he would secure one or even two full-time relief nurses—nurses whom he knows. But I’m stranded here. There’s not much I can do, except hide my fatigue from my patient.”
One night Scott was sleeping fitfully in the dimly lighted room. Cherry sat at a little distance from the bed. The very sight of pillows and covers made her yawn. Determinedly, she went to the open window and leaned out. She breathed in long, deep draughts of cool night air. It refreshed her.
It was very late. The street below was nearly deserted, electric signs were darkened, there was no traffic. Only street lamps made oases of light in the shadows, only a few solitary footsteps rang out on the empty pavement. Cherry saw a man lurking below their window, on the opposite side of the street.
Half an hour later, she again leaned out the window and again she saw the man. Still there! Why, at this hour? And why was he looking up at their window? He was an inconspicuous man in a dark suit, thoroughly ordinary except that, as the street light fell on his shoulders, Cherry saw that one shoulder was slightly higher than the other. This struck a chord in Cherry’s memory.
“It’s the man who sat opposite us on the train,” she suddenly realized. “That man who was always underfoot. I’m sure it’s he!” she told herself. “But why is he trailing us?” In search of a motive for this man’s strange behavior, she concentrated on reconstructing every moment of that train ride. Mr. Scott, Miss Kitty, and she had had to ride in Pullman seats, she remembered, and this man, now loitering under the street light, had sat opposite them reading a magazine. But he seemed, Cherry now recalled, to be very much interested in their conversation. What were they discussing? Cherry racked her brains. Oh, yes! The usual thing—fortunetellers. Mr. Scott had heatedly denounced them—especially Gregory Carroll. Carroll—blackmail! The two words suddenly fused with almost physical impact. Cherry grew chill at this sudden realization. “That’s it!” she exclaimed excitedly to herself. “That man is trailing Scott Owens—and he must be connected with Carroll!” Panic swept over her.