E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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Transcriber’s Note
This eBook contains only the story “Locked Doors”; althoughthe title page is from a printed omnibus edition.
Mary Roberts Rinehart’s
CRIME BOOK
Containing
THREE COMPLETE STORIES
THE AFTER HOUSE
LOCKED DOORS
THE RED LAMP
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers
By arrangement with Farrar & Rinehart
COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1925, BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
LOCKED DOORS
I
“You promised,” I reminded Mr. Patton, “to play withcards on the table.”
“My dear young lady,” he replied, “I have no cards!I suspect a game, that’s all.”
“Then—do you need me?”
The detective bent forward, his arms on his desk, andlooked me over carefully.
“What sort of shape are you in? Tired?”
“No.”
“Nervous?”
“Not enough to hurt.”
“I want you to take another case, following a nursewho has gone to pieces,” he said, selecting his wordscarefully. “I don’t want to tell you a lot—I want you togo in with a fresh mind. It promises to be an extraordinarycase.”
“How long was the other nurse there?”
“Four days.”
“She went to pieces in four days!”
“Well, she’s pretty much unstrung. The worst is, shehasn’t any real reason. A family chooses to live in anunusual manner, because they like it, or perhaps they’reafraid of something. The girl was, that’s sure. I hadnever seen her until this morning, a big, healthy-looking2young woman; but she came in looking back over hershoulder as if she expected a knife in her back. She saidshe was a nurse from St. Luke’s and that she’d been ona case for four days. She’d left that morning afterabout three hours’ sleep in that time, being locked ina room most of the time, and having little but crackersand milk for food. She thought it was a case for thepolice.”
“Who is ill in the house? Who was her patient?”
“There is no illness, I believe. The French governesshad gone, and they wished the children competently caredfor until they replaced her. That was the reason givenher when she went. Afterward she—well, she was puzzled.”
“How are you going to get me there?”
He gathered acquiescence from my question and smiledapproval.
“Good girl!” he said. “Never mind how I’ll getyou there. You are the most dependable woman Iknow.”
“The most curious, perhaps?” I retorted. “Four dayson the case, three hours’ sleep, locked in and yelling‘Police’! Is it out of town?”
“No, in the heart of the city, on Beauregard Square.Can you get some St. Luke’s uniforms? They wantanother St. Luke’s nurse.”
I said I could get the uniforms, and he wrote the addresson a card.
“Better arrive about five,” he said.
“But—if they are not expecting me?”
“They will be expecting you,” he replied enigmatically.
“The doctor, if he’s a St. Luke’s man——”
“There is no doctor.”
It wa