“They build these things so jerry in California, don’t they,” she tittered. “Not like in the East.”
“Are you from the East?” he asked from the top of the stairs.
“Oh yes. Born and raised in Idaho.”
He sat down on the side of the bed and untied a shoe, annoyed that his sickness didn’t make him feel sicker.
“All diseases ought to be sudden,” he said aloud, “like the Bubonic Plague.”
“I’ve never taken Bubonic Plague cases,” said Miss Hapgood smugly.
Emmet looked up.
“Never taken—”
He decided to go on with his shoes but now she was on her knees, converting his laces expertly into a cat’s cradle. The same knack applied in a moment to the removal of his coat brought to mind an improvised straitjacket he had once seen on a berserk dockhand.
“I can take care of the trousers myself,” he suggested—whereupon Miss Hapgood stepped lithely around to the other side of the bed, dislodging a brass fire-screen, which spread itself in three great gasps on the floor.
“Quite all right,” he said quickly. “Pajamas are in my suitcase—I’m not quite unpacked.”
After a search Miss Hapgood handed him a full dress shirt and a pair of corduroy slacks—luckily Emmet caught the glint of the studs before the shirt was entirely on. When he was finally in bed with two pills down him and a thermometer in his mouth Miss Hapgood spoke from the mirror—where she stood drawing his comb through her neatly matted hair.
“You have nice things,” she suggested. “I’ve worked in homes lately where I wouldn’t spit on the things they had. But I asked Dr. Cardiff to find me a case with a real gentleman—because I’m a lady.”
She walked to the window and cast an eye over the early harvest of the San Fernando Valley.
“Do you think Carlos Davis is going to marry Marya Thomas? Don’t try to answer till I take the thermometer out.”
But it was already out and Emmet was sitting up.
“That reminds me—I didn’t intend to go to bed until after Miss Halliday paid her call.”
“I gave you two sleeping pills, Mr. Mom.”
He swung his legs out of bed.
“Couldn’t you give me an emetic or something? I could get rid of the pills. Some salt and water.”
“Bring on a convulsion?” Miss Hapgood exclaimed. “In a heart case?”
“Then order some hot coffee—and dig out that silk dressing gown. Next thing I’ll forget my name.”
He did not mean this as a reproach, nor was Miss Hapgood offended for she merely shook her head, sat down and did piano scales with one hand.
“Well, I’ll sleep now,” Emmet decided desperately. “Miss Halliday probably won’t be here for a couple of hours. You’ll wake me up, won’t you.”
“You can’t sleep in that position.”
“I always go to sleep on my elbow.”
She collapsed him with the most adroit movement she had made during their acquaintance.
II
When he awoke it was dark outside, and in the room save for a small lamp shaded by a towel. Miss Hapgood was not in evidence but his eyes accommodated themselves to the fact that another woman in white sat in an overstuffed chair across the room—a woman from the same gigantic tribe as Dr. Cardiff. As he looked at his wrist watch to find it was half past ten the lady started awake and gave him the information that she was his night nurse, Mrs. Ewing.
“Have there been any visitors?” he asked.
“Miss Halliday. She said she’d try to drop in tomorrow. I told her you couldn’t possibly be disturbed.”
He mourned silently as Mrs. Ewing rose and ballooned into the hall; he was conscious of a conversation outside his door.
“Who is it?” he inquired. A breathless voice with a glow in it answered:
“It’s your secretary, Mr. Monsen.”
“What are you doing here at this hour?”
The two women—one monstrous, one simply a woman, reduced almost to frailty beside the other, blocked out the doorway. A failing yellow bulb in the hall still revealed Miss Trainor’s smile—repentant now, almost mischievous, but as if she was quite sure that he wouldn’t be too severe about it.
“Frankly, Mr. Monsen,” said Mrs. Ewing frankly, “—frankly I didn’t know what sort of man you’d prove to be when you awoke. And when I found the maid was out frankly I asked this—this—” She glanced at Miss Trainor as if for some final confirmation, “—this secretary, to stay until you woke up.”
Emmet’s eyes were not quite accommodated to the dim light, either in the bedroom or the hall but he could have sworn that at some point the Trainor girl winked at him.
“Well, perhaps you’ll let her go now,” he suggested.
“Good night, Mrs. Ewing,” said the Trainor girl. “I hope you have a good night, Mr. Monsen.”
As her steps had faded on the stairs Emmet asked:
“What sort of person did you expect to find when I woke up?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t you talk to Dr. Cardiff?”
“No. I had only the nurse’s chart to go on—and some of it I couldn’t read, but I’ve done a good deal of work with alcoholics and junk addicts.”
Emmet was as wide awake as he had ever been in his life but this last expression conveyed nothing to him except a suggestion of some stories of Booth Tarkington about an antique dealer.
“Dope fiends, to you laymen,” said Mrs. Ewing casually.
They regarded each other and Emmet swiftly recreated her past—and a wave of sympathy went out from him toward the helpless drunkards and drug victims that she must have crushed into the ineffectuality of swatted mosquitoes.
Then he wanted to laugh but he remembered that Dr. Cardiff had told him he must not laugh very deeply or do anything to agitate his diaphragm, so he took it out in a remark:
“I have my opium cooked right in with my milk toast. And the liquor—well, what I’m sore about is that I didn’t go at it a year ago, when we had to put tablets in our drinking water. But if you can’t read the chart please call Dr. Cardiff.”
He added politely:
“You see Miss Trainor has work to do in the daytime. You wouldn’t want to have to help her with her typing, would you?”
Mrs. Ewing changed the subject firmly.
“Shall we have a bath?”
“I took a bath today. Am I running much fever for the day—I think Miss Hapgood wrote it down.”
“You’ll have to ask Dr. Cardiff those questions, Mr. Monsen.”
There was nothing much he could do about this but, concluding that his mood of irritation was his own fault, he decided it was his turn to change the subject.
“Mrs. Ewing, there’s some stuff I got in Melbourne that usually takes down these fevers,” he said. “I forgot to tell Dr. Cardiff. It’s made out of some sub-tropical herb. You’ll find it in that medical kit that Margerilla put in the closet across the hall.”
“She went off for the evening, Mr. Monsen. I’ll give you some medicine.”
“No—you can find the kit—brown leather—the stuff’s in green capsules.”
“I couldn’t very well give a medication without the Doctor’s permission.”
“Find the stuff, call him up and read him the formula that’s pasted on the bottle. Or I’ll talk to him.”
She swelled near him and their eyes met. Then, with ponderous doubt, she launched herself across the hall and presently he heard her in the impromptu medicine cabinet, clicking open a case. A minute later she called:
“It isn’t here. There’s quinine, and some typhoid serum and some first aid things, but no green capsules.”
“Bring it in here.”
“I’ve got my electric torch, Mr. Monsen, and I’ve taken everything out of the bag.”
He was out of the bed and starting for the trunk room, impatiently grabbing at a quilt in passing as he discovered that he was damp with perspiration.
> “Mr. Monsen! I told you.”
“I’m sure the stuff’s here. One of those side pockets.”
There was a gentle click behind them—the significance of which neither of them realized as Emmet groped into the bag.
“Please turn that torch here—” He realized in mid-sentence what had happened: the door had swung gently closed in some casual draft. Moreover, in the full inquisitive light of the torch it was apparent that there was no bolt or handle on the inside corresponding to the lock without. Simultaneously as if from the shock the battery of the nurse’s torch expired without a sound.
III
Emmet’s mind, travelling faster than Mrs. Ewing’s, was the first to realize that they were in a situation. His second thought was quite selfishly of himself: it was cold in the closet and he drew the quilt around him Arab fashion, conscious of the nurse’s heavy breathing, thinking of men in trapped submarines, and of how long the oxygen would last when consumed and expired by that pocket-cruiser of a chest.
“Cruiser” was an apt thought for within a minute Mrs. Ewing was in such active motion as to convince him that the closet was not as large as he had imagined. Whether she suspected that this was part of a plot, or whether she was already fighting for air, he could not determine in the darkness—so he merely dodged about for a minute in his dampening burnouse, trying to keep from being crushed against the wall. Until relief came with her sudden explosive announcement:
“There’s a window!”
There indeed was a window and only the blackness of the night outside had kept them from perceiving it before. The question was whether it led to a roof or opened on a sheer drop—presently the forward section of Mrs. Ewing was outside the window, trying to determine which against a sightless sky. Then she made an exultant discovery.
“I can see now,” she said. “There’s a roof below this and I can reach it.”
The spirit of the girl scouts sprung into fire somewhere in her geography, and before Emmet could even caution her she was entirely out the window and he heard a tin roof give a discouraged creak. The aperture let in a cool breeze and as Emmet crouched down on the floor Mrs. Ewing’s voice blew back into the trunk room.
“I can’t see anything.”
“The doctor will be here in the morning,” Emmet said hopefully; deciding hastily that humor was out of place, he added:
“Call for help. No—don’t call ‘Help’! Call ‘Trouble at Mr. Monsen’s’ or something like that. And say: ‘no burglars’—otherwise somebody’s liable to come over with a shotgun and spray you.”
“Trouble at Mr. Monsen’s,” she thundered obediently, “—no burglars!”
She continued without response. In the interval Emmet imagined them castaway there for a week, living off the green capsules and then the iodine from the medical kit.
Between shivers he realized that Mrs. Ewing was in conversation he could only half hear with someone below. In a moment she reported:
“It’s a man in a white coat.”
He listened.
“How’ya baby.” The voice was outside and far below.
Then the nurse:
“The kitchen door may be unlocked. If it isn’t, you come up here and I’ll give you directions.”
“Got couple drings for us, baby?”
“This is serious,” Mrs. Ewing said indignantly. “I am a Registered Nurse—locked in a medicine closet.”
“Any my kind of medicine in that closet?”
At this point Emmet missed a few sentences but presently Mrs. Ewing looked back into the closet.
“He seemed to understand,” she said. “But he was awfully drunk. He’s going to try the kitchen door.”
Once more a character passes out of this history. Neither of them laid eyes upon this stray personage again. But ages later, perhaps twenty minutes later, Emmet spoke up.
“Come in and shut the window,” he said. “It’s getting colder.”
“I prefer to sit out here.”
“Shut the window then.”
A pause.
“I’d come in, Mr. Monsen, but you understand I hardly know you.”
“I understand. I hardly know you either.”
She hesitated a moment longer—then she came to a decision and climbed back in, half shutting the window after her.
“We’ll just have to wait,” he said drowsily. “I took some aspirin.”
There was another gap in time for which Emmet could not accurately account though he felt sure that Mrs. Ewing, crouching delicately across from him, did not close her eyes. Then he was awakened by the sound of her fists beating on the doors, her voice calling “Margerilla! Margerilla!”
“What!” he demanded.
“It’s Margerilla,” she cried. “I heard her car!”
“Solution,” muttered Emmet, but the tone of Mrs. Ewing’s cries had not served to reassure Margerilla below—it was some time before the key turned in the lock.
Margerilla atoned for her dilatory attitude by a burst of coy laughter.
“Why, you two!” she exclaimed. “Whatever you doin’ in there?”
Emmet stood up, drawing his burnouse around him. He called in vain on the chivalry of his youthful reading, but nothing occurred to him.
“We got locked in the medicine closet,” said Mrs. Ewing majestically.
“Yes,” said Emmet haughtily, “we did.”
Like Caesar in his toga covered with many wounds, he could only follow the nurse past the giggling Margerilla, and collapse into bed behind the door of the sick room.
***
He woke up into a world that even as he opened his eyes seemed vaguely threatening. It was still May; the gardens of the Davis estate had erupted almost overnight into a wild rash of roses, which threw a tangle of sweet contagion up over his porch and across the window screen; but he felt a sharp reaction from the humorous desperation that had carried him through the day before. Had he been told the absolute truth about his condition? And would Elsa Halliday come today—and be the same girl whom he had parted with two years before? Would he himself seem different with fever burning in him, its secret in his heart?
When he was indiscreet enough to open his eyes it was to see Miss Hapgood, back “on duty” and rushing toward him, with a thermometer held stilletto-like in a wavering hand.
Something would have to be done about her he knew—as she arrested her rush and shook down the thermometer—shook it in fact all the way to the floor where it rolled in sections beneath the dresser.
Wearily he rang twice—a signal arranged for the secretary the day before. As she appeared he hunched up on his pillow—then he followed her infectious glance toward the window. “Lot of them, aren’t there?”
“I’d just let them grow right into this room,” the Trainor girl suggested. “And Miss Halliday sent flowers this morning.”
“Did she?” He grew eager. “What kind?”
“Roses.” After a moment she added, “American Beauties.”
“Get them, will you, Miss Hapgood?” Then to Miss Trainor: “What are these on the porch?”
“Talismans—with a few Cecile Brunners.” As the door closed behind Miss Hapgood, she volunteered: “I’ll drive down to the drug store and get another thermometer. I see there’s been an accident.”
“Thanks. The most important thing is to see that I’m awake when, and if, Miss Halliday comes. Apparently I’m getting sick man’s psychology in a rush—I feel as if there’s a conspiracy between the doctor and nurses to keep me sort of frozen—like that woman in the magazine.”
She opened the screen window, pinched off a rose and tossed it to the pillow beside him.
“There’s something you can trust,” she said; then briskly: “You have mail downstairs. Some men like to start a day with the mail—but Mr. Rachoff always liked to get through his planned work before he even read the newspaper.”
Emmet conceiving a faint hostility toward Mr. Rachoff, weighed the possibilities.
“Well, any phone call from Miss Halliday comes first, and I wish you could find out when she’s coming without appearing too anxious. About the work—I felt like it yesterday—now I don’t feel like anything till I know what this doctor’s planned. Give me that nurse’s pad, will you.”
“I’ll ring for Miss Hapgood.”
“Oh no.”
He was half out of bed when Miss Trainor yielded suddenly. In possession of the chart Emmet settled down and read steadily for several minutes; then he was out of bed in earnest, reaching for his dressing gown with one hand and ringing three times for the nurse. There were words too—words that he merely hoped Miss Trainor didn’t understand, impeded as they were by the increasing bronchitis contracted in the medicine closet.
“Get me Dr. Cardiff on the phone! And then read it—read it yourself! Lie on my right side three hours—then I ask the nurse to turn me gently to the left! This isn’t a routine! These are instructions for an undertaker, only he forgot the embalming fluid!”
Some of the blame that later fell on the Trainor girl must fairly be partitioned to her, for it was from the moment that she handed Emmet the chart that the complexion of the case changed. Later she confessed that she could have seized it and darted from the room but in Emmet’s state of mind this suggested a chase, perhaps the greater of the two evils.
Emmet descended to the living room, sat in his armchair and brooded. He asked the Trainor girl to sit in the room because something about her made him rather ashamed to speak crossly or harshly. Her eyes with their other-world astigmatism, their suggestion of looking slantwise upon a richer and more amusing universe must never be corrected back into the dull vision of the truth at which he stared at present. Emmet did not want her to see the things he did. When Dr. Cardiff arrived he felt comparatively calm.
“Let me have the first go,” he suggested, “because what you say will be the final authoritative word and all that.”
Dr. Cardiff nodded, with obvious patience.
“I looked at that chart,” said Emmet, “and Doctor—I can’t live like that for four months.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Dr. Cardiff scathingly. “I’ve heard dozens of these so called ‘high pressure’ men say: ‘If you think I’m going to stay in this — — bed you must be crazy!’ And a few days later when they get scared they’re meek as—”
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