Page 103 of The Other Lady Vanishes

Gill’s office was locked.

“We’ll have to make Harold give us the key,” she said.

“Let me try my skeleton key,” Jake said.

“You have a skeleton key?”

“Technical term.”

Jake took his gun out from under his jacket and used the handle to tap the glass pane in the door with judicious force. The glass shattered. He reached inside and turned the knob.

“Right,” Adelaide said. “A skeleton key. Very handy piece of equipment.”

“Yes, it is,” Jake said.

The iron ring containing the key to the fifth-floor ward was on a hook on the wall. Adelaide grabbed it.

No one tried to stop them until they reached the locked ward on the fifth floor. At that point they were confronted with another thick wooden door and an old-fashioned lock. Adelaide got the door open with the key.

She thought she was braced for the return to the ghastly place where she had spent a two-month-long nightmare, but when she moved into ward five, a wave of panic hit her. She froze. She wanted to turn around and run for her life.

She was vaguely aware that Jake had stopped beside her. He surveyed the ward with its sterile white walls, white tile floor, and twin rows of locked rooms.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re never coming back to this place.”

She pulled herself together. “But if I do end up back here, you’ll come and get me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m all right now,” she said. “The staircase that leads to the lab is at the far end of this hall. Whatever you do, don’t look through the grills into any of the rooms. Don’t make eye contact with any of the patients.”

“I understand. The patients deserve some privacy.”

“Of course, but it’s not just a matter of privacy. Only the most troubled are housed on this floor. Some of them can become quite violent. If they weren’t paranoid before they were committed to this place, they became paranoid soon after they were locked up here. I did.”

“You had good reason to become paranoid.”

A face appeared at one of the grills. Adelaide was careful not to look at the patient but she could not ignore the moaning cry.

“It’s the ghost,” he rasped in anguished tones. “She’s back.”

Another face appeared at the grilled opening in the door across the hall.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a woman keened. “Go away. Run. They’ll kill you again.”

“She’s back,” someone shouted. “The ghost is back.”

There was a face at every grill now. One of the patients uttered an anguished howl. The rest took up the cry.

“It’s the ghost...”

“The ghost is back...”

The glass-paned door of the nurses’ station opened. A large, heavily muscled man with straggly hair emerged from the small room. Adelaide recognized him immediately. His name was Buddy. He ignored her and fixed his attention on Jake.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Buddy snarled. “This is a locked ward. No visitors allowed.”

“Government business,” Jake said. He flipped open the leather case and snapped it shut in one smooth motion. In the process he made sure that the holstered gun under his jacket was briefly visible. “There’s been a breach of security concerning the research that is being conducted here at the Rushbrook Sanitarium. I have been sent to collect any and all files pertinent to that research.”