Page:The Black Cat v01no05 (1896-02).pdf/41

Rh She slid a hand to lift the head. She bent over the pillow with a steady glass.

The bed was empty. It was not even made up. There were no sheets on it, no pillow-slip.

The room was like a frozen tomb. The glass dropped from her hand, deluging the mattress with its contents.

She rushed from the room. Fortunately, her felt slippers made no sound. The door swung to noiselessly behind her. She fled up the corridor, and flattened her back against the wall at its furthest end, shaking as with a mortal chill.

There she remained until the gray light of a snowy day crept through the window at her side.

When the day nurse, rosy and refreshed, came to relieve her, she said, eying the night nurse a little curiously:

"I guess you'd better tumble into bed as soon as you can, Miss Evans. You look as if your month's work had about finished you."

The nurse whose turn came next was the one who had been with Mrs. Prince. The last night of her watch was the twenty-seventh of February. She had had an unusually hard month's work, and was exceedingly tired and not a little cross when, at midnight, a bell rang which she could not locate.

"Some plaguey wire out of gear again," she said, provoked, after a second fruitless search for the elusive tinkle. She had turned at the end of the corridor, and stood just by the Prince Ward. The bell rang sharply.

"Well, I want to know!" she said aloud. "If isn't in this ward!"

She went in immediately and would have turned on the light, when she was stopped by a curiously familiar, though indistinct, voice.

"Water—water!"

"For the land's sake," ejaculated the Down-Easter, going toward the bed. "What's this?"

Her foot slipped on something; she tripped and came near falling. She stooped and lifted from the floor a long, heavy plait of black hair. She stood stupidly, holding it in her hands, staring down at the bed.