"H. L. Gold - And Three to Get Ready" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold H. L)

The other patients were all doped up or asleep, so they were no help. Slattery, though, swore nobody
except nurses on duty in the ward or on the floor went past him. He claimed he didn't fall asleep once
during the night, and the funny thing is the nurses said the same. Or maybe it's not so funny; they like the
old man and might do a little lying to help him off a rough spot.
Well, that put the girls on an even worse spot. If they were telling the truth, that Slattery had been
awake the whole night, then one of them must have done it. Because Slattery had said that only the
nurses went in and out of the ward. Capt. Warren, the Homicide man, jumped on that fast and got the
girls to line up in front of Slattery.
"Well, Slattery?" Warren said. "One of these nurses must have been the killer. Do you recognize one
who went in there with no business to? Or did one of them act suspicious, and which was it?"
Slattery looked unhappy as he went down the line and stared at the girls' faces. He shook his head
figuring, I guess, that he was in for some real trouble now.
"It was pretty dim in the ward," he mumbled. "All they keep on is a little night lightтАФjust enough so
the girls can find their way around without tripping, but not bright enough to keep the patients awake. I
can't even be sure which nurses went in and out."
"Nothing suspicious?" Slattery demanded.
"Search me. They were nurses and my job is to keep anybody else out. As long as they were nurses
and it was so dim there, one of them could have had an army rifle under her uniform and I wouldn't
know."
Capt. Warren questioned the girls, got nowhere, and had them all checked to see if one didn't know
Michaels well enough to want to knock him off.
I got all that from Sally Norton, one of the homely babes in the mental hygiene ward, when she came
back from the grilling to go on duty. She went to her locker to change and then ran back, yipping, and
grabbed Dr. Schatz. She had her uniform held up in front of her, like a shield, kind of, and she was
shaking it angrily.
"Just take a look at this, Doctor!" she said. "Came back clean from the laundry yesterday and I
haven't even worn it yet, and look at it now!"
"If there's anything wrong with the laundry, take it up with them," he said, annoyed. "I'm having
enough trouble keeping my patients quiet with all this racket going on over Michaels."
"But that's just it. I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with Michaels." And she showed
him the sleeve, where there were red spots down near the wrist.
Schatz called in Capt. Warren and Dr. Merriman, the head of the mental hygiene department.
Merriman looked sicker than usual; he kept his hand inside his jacket, over his heart. All this excitement
wasn't doing him any more good than it was doing the patients.
Warren was interested, all right. Being there in the hospital, it was easy to run a test and prove the
spots were blood, human, Type BтАФwhich happened to be Michaels' blood type. He wasn't the only one
in the hospital with that type, of course, but it isn't so common that Capt. Warren could disregard it.
Warren started to give Sally a bad time, but Dr. Merriman cut in and told him about the little guy and
the story about saying names three times.
"What in hell kind of nonsense is this?" Warren asked. "I'm looking for evidence, not a screwball fairy
tale some nut thought up."
"Exactly," Dr. Schatz said fast; he'd been trying to head off Dr. Merriman, but hadn't dared to
interrupt. "It's a fairly typical delusion with no more basis in fact than witches or goblins. I can't sanction
questioning a disturbed patient because of it."
"You don't have to bother," said Warren. "I've got more important thingsтАФ"
"The point," Dr. Merriman went on, "is that this man claimed he was afraid to mentionтАФspecifically,
mind youтАФthe name of Paul Michaels. That was why he wanted to be committed, in fact."
Warren looked baffled. "You mean you think he said Michaels' name three times and Michaels died
because of that?"
"Certainly not," Merriman said stiffly. "It's a remarkable coincidence that deserves investigation, that's