The mosquito simply wouldn’t start again. Velma switched out the light, sat on the edge of the bed waiting.
Still the mosquito wouldn’t buzz.
Knuckles sounded gently at her door.
“What is it?” Velma asked.
Velma could never hear the sound of a knock on her door at night without having a thoroughly professional reaction. What was it this time? Had a spell hit Banning Clarke so suddenly that he couldn’t even give that one convulsive press to the call button—? “What is it?” she called, again.
The voice of Nell Sims, sounding almost surreptitious, asked, “Are you all right, Miss Starler?”
“Why yes, of course. Why?”
“Nothing. I saw your light go on and I just wondered. Jim Bradisson and his mother are sick.”
Velma was throwing a robe around her. “Come in. What’s wrong with them?”
Nell opened the door. Attired in a somewhat dilapidated dressing gown, and broad shapeless slippers, her stringy, colorless hair wrapped in curlers, her eyes swollen with sleep, she came shuffling across the room, dragging her feet. “They say it’s something they ate.”
“Are any of the others sick?”
“That’s what I wanted to find out. I saw your light go on. You sure you’re all right?”
“Why, yes, of course. What are their symptoms?”
“Just ordinary symptoms — nausea, burning sensation. Something they ate! Bosh! That’s all stuff and nonsense. They ate too much. Look at Mrs. Bradisson — keeps talking about her weight, never does a lick of work, picks out all the rich things to eat, can’t ever pass up dessert, usually has a second helping if she can get it. Know what I said to her just the other day when she was struggling with her dress?”
Velma was hardly listening. She was debating whether to let the situation rectify itself, or to see what could be done. One thing was definitely certain: she mustn’t let them get alarmed and call Dr. Kenward at this hour of the night.
“Know what I said to her?” Nell Sims repeated.
“What?” Velma asked, her mind far away.
Nell chuckled. “I spoke right up to her. I says, ‘You’ve got to remember, Mrs. Bradisson, you can’t eat your cake without having it too.’”
“How long has she been ill?”
“I don’t know. I imagine about half an hour, from what she said.”
Velma said, “I guess I’d better see if there’s anything I can do.”
Velma followed Nell Sims down the long hallway to her suite of rooms in the north wing, where Lillian Bradisson and her son James had a private sitting-room with bedrooms opening off from it.
Velma could hear the sound of retching, followed by groaning. The door to Mrs. Bradisson’s room was open, and Velma, walking in with professional competence, said, “They told me you were ill, Mrs. Bradisson. Is there something I can do?”
Mrs. Bradisson, weakened by her retching, dropped back against the pillows, regarding the nurse with bloodshot, watering eyes. “I’ve been poisoned. I’m going to die. I’m simply burning up.” She stretched forth a trembling hand to a glass about a third filled with water, drained it eagerly, said, “Would you mind filling that for me again?”
Nell Sims took the glass to the bathroom, held it under the tap. “Nonsense,” she said. “It wasn’t what you ate. It was how much you ate. No one else in the house is sick.”
“My son and I have both been poisoned.”
“Nonsense!”
Mrs. Bradisson said, “I’m so glad you came down, Miss Starler. I just telephoned Dr. Kenward. He said to have you look in, and if you thought it necessary, he’d come right over. I think you’d better get him here.”
“Oh, I think we’ll do all right,” Velma said cheerfully. “Whatever it is that’s causing the gastric upset, you’re getting rid of it, and you should be feeling all right within fifteen or twenty minutes. Perhaps we can find something that will sort of settle that stomach. I understand your son is ill?”
“He isn’t as bad as I am. He— He—” Her face twisted with pain for a moment. Then she lay back limply against the pillows, utterly exhausted.
Velma said, “I’ll look in on Jim and see how he is.”
Jim Bradisson was apparently having the same symptoms as his mother, but he was stronger and more lucid. “Look, Velma,” he said, “I think you’d better get Dr. Kenward up here right away.”
“He’s so overworked now,” Velma explained, “I don’t like to bother him with night calls unless it’s very urgent. Quite frequently a person gets acute digestive upsets from food poisoning.”
Jim Bradisson lowered his voice. “I’ve had food poisoning before. This isn’t food poisoning. This is some other form of poison. My mouth seems to be full of metal filings — and I’m burning with thirst. It’s a terrible burning thirst, which doesn’t seem right to me, and my stomach and abdomen are sore. I can hardly touch them. I–I tell you, Velma, I think we’ve been poisoned.”
Velma tried to make her voice sound casual. “Any cramping of the muscles?” she asked.
Bradisson showed surprise. “Why yes, now that you speak of it, I’ve had cramps in the calves of my legs — but that wouldn’t have anything to do with this other. I suppose I walked a little too much this afternoon. You know, Mother and I climbed up around the hills. She’s really determined to take off some weight.”
Bradisson smiled. Keenly devoted to his mother, he recognized, nevertheless, the utter futility of her sporadic attempts to take off weight. “About all she did,” he said, “was to work up a terrific appetite, and, of course, she gave me one too. It was a lot of exercise. And then Nell Sims had fried chicken. Mother and I certainly went to town on that fried chicken. I’m afraid I’m going to have another spell. Good Lord! This is worse than seasickness.”
Velma said, “Well, I’ll telephone Dr. Kenward. Perhaps he’d better run over.”
“I wish you would.”
Bradisson dashed in the direction of the bathroom. Velma went downstairs to telephone Dr. Kenward. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come,” she told him.
“The ordinary gastric disturbance in a violent form?” he asked over the telephone.
She placed her lips close to the mouthpiece. “The symptoms of arsenic poisoning, completely typical cases even down to the muscular cramps in the calves of the legs.”
Velma always marveled at the way Dr. Kenward would seem half asleep over the telephone, and then suddenly, when confronted with an emergency, could become as wide awake as though he had been fully dressed and waiting for this particular call. “It will take me about twelve minutes,” he said. “Watch the symptoms. I don’t suppose you have any dialyzed iron?”
“No I haven’t.”
“All right. Give stomach washes, and stand by. I’ll be there.”
Dr. Kenward made it in just a little better than ten minutes, and for the next forty minutes Velma was as busy as she had ever been in her life. Dr. Kenward wasted no time in conversation. He simply went to work with stomach washing, the introduction of iron oxide to form the sparingly soluble ferric arsenite, and then washing out the iron compounds. The patients responded rather quickly to treatment. By two o’clock they were resting easily, and Dr. Kenward, with an all but imperceptible jerk of his head, summoned Velma Starler to a conference in her room.
Velma sat on the edge of the bed, giving Dr. Kenward the comfortable chair, saying nothing until he had settled back with the first deeply relaxing drag of cigarette smoke, exhaling it with what was almost a sigh.
It was a tense period of waiting, similar to that which she had shared with Dr. Kenward on innumerable nocturnal vigils. He had, for the moment, done everything that medical science could do. But before going home, he waited for the turn of the tide, for the treatment to develop its full efficiency. During such periods, he was relaxed in the sense that a pugilist is relaxed between rounds. His mind, keyed up to racing efficiency, could not relax, but he could somewhat lessen the nerve strain by stretching out in a chair and relaxing his muscles as much as possible.