The talkers

Somebody knocked at the door; Sutton rose nervously, unlocked and opened it, dazzled by the outer lights.

Figures in brilliant silks entered—Pockman, Sadoul, a man and a young woman in street clothes, carrying valises, and George Derring wearing violet royal robes and tinsel crown, his vizard pushed up over his bald forehead, a monocle shining in his pallid face.

“What the devil is all this?” he demanded. “If the girl is actually dead she can’t remain in my place. The thing to do is to call up the proper authorities——”

“Keep your shirt on,” interrupted Pockman calmly. “Come on in, Miss Cross. You can change your dress in the next bedroom. Come over here, Stent. Unpack your things on that table——”

“Is—this girl—dead?” faltered Derring, peering at the sheeted shape through his monocle.

Pockman consulted his watch: “She’s been dead for three hours and forty minutes, George.”

“Why didn’t you t-tell me?” stammered Derring. “What are you going to do to her? This isn’t a morgue. It isn’t a place for autopsies——”

Sadoul drew the stammering man aside: “If you’ll keep your mouth shut, Pockman will see to it that this affair is kept out of the newspapers. Go downstairs, George, and when your party breaks up, come back here and we’ll fix it up for you so there’ll be no notoriety or scandal.”

Derring, white and inclined to tremble, suffered himself to be led to the door and thrust out. Sadoul turned the key with a grimace and came back to where Pockman stood aiding his assistant, Stent, to unpack the valises.

A case of surgical instruments was laid on the table. Beside this Stent placed a miniature porcelain refrigerator, several basins, packets of sterilized gauze, other objects unfamiliar to Sutton.

The young woman whom Pockman had addressed as Miss Cross came back from the further bedroom clad in the white garb of a hospital nurse. She seemed to know what was to be done with the several packages from the valises and became exceedingly busy.

Pockman and Sadoul, carrying other packets, went away together toward the bathroom, leaving Sutton standing alone by the table.

The efficient Miss Cross paid him no attention. She first unrolled a rubber sheet and then began to undress the dead girl.

Sutton pivoted in his tracks and went slowly toward the bathroom, where Pockman and Sadoul, their masquerade finery discarded, were dressing in the white robes of operating surgeons. A smell of disinfectants pervaded the place.

“What are you preparing to do?” asked Sutton.

“Stick around and see,” replied Pockman flippantly. His white robes and flat, fat face made a most unpleasant impression upon Sutton.

Sadoul, also, was ready now; they returned to the room of death.

“If you’re squeamish,” remarked Sadoul, with his odd, shadowy smile, “you’d better leave the room, Sutton.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I? Nothing. Pockman, however, is going to try something.”

“If she’s already dead, what more is there to try?” asked the other huskily.

“Stand over here and watch. We shan’t be long.”

“Is—is this sort of thing legal, Sadoul?”

“Certainly. At least there’s no law forbidding it. Pockman is a graduate physician. There are no laws forbidding a qualified physician, who has been called in to do his best, from doing his best. And this is Pockman’s one best bet.”

“But—after death—what is there a physician can do?”

“What is death?” asked Sadoul, with his dark and shadowy smile.

There ensued a silence while the washing of the unclothed body was accomplished and the corpse laid face downward. One by one Pockman took certain sterilized instruments from Miss Cross, employed each with incredible deftness. Sutton had averted his head as Pockman made a tiny, deep incision at the nape of the girl’s neck. The hemorrhage was slight; Sadoul opened the drawer of the miniature refrigerator, Miss Cross took from it something that she carefully placed in a vessel filled with liquid. Twice she tested the temperature of the liquid.

“Ready,” she said in her low, pleasant voice.

With his forceps Pockman picked out from the liquid in the vessel something that seemed to resemble a small oviform body—like a lump of animal tissue, and inserted it in the incision which he had made at the nape of the dead girl’s neck.

Deftly the wound was closed, sterilized, covered with a film of transparent liquid which instantly hardened. A few drops of blood had flowed freely.

“All right,” murmured Pockman, “turn her over.”

He cast another brief glance at the dead girl, then walked back to the bathroom to wash.

Sadoul followed him, wiping his dark, bony hands on a bit of gauze. Sutton, feeling slightly nauseated, turned away from the body which Miss Cross was now swathing in a sterilized sheet.

He stood at one of the darkened and dripping windows, staring out. It was raining, but a few large snowflakes slanted through the downpour.

The odours in the room—the taint of death—were becoming insufferable; he went to the door, drew the bolt, and stepped outside onto the balcony.

The ball was over, the music gone. The last of the maskers were leaving the studio—a loud-voiced group lingering in the supper room, another near the entrance hall.

Old Derring, in his rumpled royal robes, his crown on the back of his ruddy, bald head, stood nervously receiving the adieux and noisy gratitude of his guests. The air reeked with perfume of roses and scent of wine; the floor was littered with débris of finery and confetti.

When at length Sutton returned to the room, the daybed was empty; Stent had already repacked both valises and was putting his hat on and buttoning his overcoat. Pockman, Sadoul, and Miss Cross had gone into the farther bedroom, where a light burned. Sutton could see them through the vista of the connecting rooms, moving quietly about, dressed now in their street clothing—excepting Miss Cross, who still wore her nurse’s garb.

When he went in to the chamber where they were gathered he discovered that the dead girl had been laid in Derring’s guest-room bed.

She seemed asleep there on the pillow; her eyes were decently closed, the bed sheets drawn to her throat. Only her wax-like skin betrayed her condition.

As Sutton entered the room, Pockman turned toward him:

“Your views concerning the dignity and tragedy of death,” he said, with that ever present undertone of irony, “are the popular and accepted views. So if you don’t think it very charitable to leave this lady all alone here during the night, why not sit up with her until I return in the morning?”

Sutton flushed. “Somebody ought to remain here out of mere decency,” he said slowly.

“All right. It’s up to you. Miss Cross is to stay for another hour; and I’d really be obliged to you if you’d stand guard here tonight and keep old Derring from making a fuss. Will you?”

After a silence: “What was it you did to her?” enquired Sutton in a constrained voice, not yet under full control.

“Nothing illegal. I am within my rights. Ask Miss Cross. If nothing happens it won’t make any difference, anyway. If anything should happen, why, I don’t care how much it’s talked about. Do you, Sadoul?”

“Rather not,” said Sadoul, with that almost imperceptible smile on his dark face, that waned and waxed like a shadow.

“What could happen?” demanded Sutton. “Death is death—isn’t it?”

Pockman shrugged, gathered up his discarded carnival robes, went over and gazed at the dead girl with a sort of mockery in his washed-out eyes—yet his silent scrutiny was sufficiently intent to reveal some graver motive—something deeper seated than sardonic indifference. Presently he turned away, with a characteristic hunching of his shoulders.

Sadoul followed him; Miss Cross went to the door with them and there they remained in low-voiced consultation until interrupted by the nervous entrance of Derring, still tremulous from shock but beginning to choke with indignation.

And his anger knew no bounds when he learned what disposition had been made of the dead girl; only a threat of newspaper notoriety hinted by Pockman checked his rush to the telephone.

“If she’s dead,” he kept repeating, “what the hell do you fellows mean by keeping her here in my apartment? It isn’t done, dammit all——”

“You go to the Ritz tonight,” counselled Sadoul. “She’ll be taken away tomorrow morning without any fuss or scandal. Tell your man to pack a bag—there’s a good fellow. Be a sport, Derring. Pockman is trying something he never had a chance to try——”

“Confound him, are there no hospitals and morgues? What does he mean by using my place to try his ghastly experiments——”

“Oh, shut up,” said Sadoul, and shoved the master of the house through the door.

A fat man-servant arrived at his shrill summons, went into his master’s bedroom, packed a suitcase, and carried it out again, breathing laboriously. Sadoul and Pockman also put on their hats and went out. Presently the front grille clanged distantly. Miss Cross closed and locked the apartment door and came back to the chamber of death, where Sutton was standing, fumbling with a rose-bud which he had found in a silver vase.

“Yes,” said Miss Cross encouragingly, “lay it on her chest if you choose.”

He dried the stem with his handkerchief and laid the blossom on the white coverlet close to her snowy chin.

Miss Cross hovered over the dead girl, touched the bright hair here and there, deftly curled and brought a saucy, wandering tendril under graver discipline, more suitable to the circumstances.

“She was very pretty, wasn’t she?” remarked Miss Cross in her low, pleasant voice, “—a very lovely young thing, physically—really quite perfect, I should say.”

“What—what was it Pockman did to her in the other room?” enquired Sutton in a strained voice.

Miss Cross had taken a chair. She was a healthy, vigourous young woman, with black eyes and hair, a rosy and cheerful mouth, and a tip-tilted nose.

Replying to Sutton’s question, she said: “If I answer you, I don’t believe you’ll entirely understand.”

“Was it a precautionary test?”

“Oh, no. We all knew she was quite dead. Dr. Pockman desired to try something never before attempted——” She looked up at Sutton, hesitated. “—Why don’t you smoke?” she suggested. “You are dreadfully nervous. It’s no disrespect to her. Seat yourself, Mr. Sutton, and light a cigarette. I’m sure if she could speak she’d tell you to do so too, poor lamb.”