Swamp Island Part 12

"Maybe. Jerry saw Deevers several times before he was put away in the pen."

"Then why not take the picture to the hospital now?"

"Okay," agreed Salt. "Let's go."

Fifteen minutes later, at the hospital, they sought unsuccessfully to pa.s.s a receptionist who sat at a desk in the lobby.

"Sorry, visiting hours are over," she explained.

"We're from the _Star_," Salt insisted. "We have to see Jerry Livingston on an important business matter."

"That's different," the receptionist replied. "You may go up to his room, but please make the call brief."

An automatic elevator carried the pair to the third floor. Jerry's door near the end of the corridor stood slightly ajar. Salt tapped lightly on it, and hearing no answer, pushed it farther open.

"Well, what d'you know!" he exclaimed.

Penny, startled by his tone of voice, peered over his shoulder.

The room was deserted. Jerry's bed, unmade, stood empty.

CHAPTER 8 _IN SEARCH OF JERRY_

"Now what could have become of Jerry?" Penny murmured as she and Salt gazed about the deserted room in amazement. "Surely we've made no mistake."

"He was a.s.signed this room all right," the photographer declared. "But maybe they changed it later."

"That's it," agreed Penny in relief. "For a minute it gave me a shock seeing that empty bed. I thought perhaps he had taken a bad turn and been removed for emergency treatment."

The pair sought Miss Brent, a floor supervisor.

"Why, the patient in Room 318 hasn't been changed elsewhere," she replied. "At least, not to my knowledge. I've been off the floor for the last half hour."

Inspecting Room 318 to satisfy herself that the bed was empty, Miss Brent questioned several nurses and an interne. No one seemed to know what had become of the patient. There was a whispered conference and then Miss Brent made a call to the superintendent.

"Something has happened to Jerry!" Penny told Salt tensely. "He may have been abducted!"

A nurse came flying up the hall from the locker room.

"Mr. Livingston's clothes are gone!" she reported.

Light began to dawn on Penny. She recalled the seemingly innocent question Jerry had asked earlier that night as to the location of the clothes locker.

"He's probably walked out of the hospital!" she exclaimed.

"Impossible!" snapped Miss Brent, though her voice lacked conviction.

"Nurses have been on duty here all the time. Mr. Livingston couldn't have obtained his clothes without being observed."

"The floor was deserted for about ten minutes," an interne recalled. "An emergency case came in and everyone was tied up."

Penny re-entered Jerry's room. The window remained closed and it was a straight drop of three stories to the yard below. She was satisfied the reporter had not taken that escape route.

A sheet of paper, propped against the mirror of the dresser attracted her eye. As she unfolded it, she saw at once that the handwriting was Jerry's.

"I'm too healthy a pup to stay in bed," he had scrawled. "Sorry, but I'm walking out."

Penny handed the note to Miss Brent who could not hide her annoyance as she read it.

"Nothing like this ever happened before!" she exclaimed. "How could the young man have left this floor and the building without being seen? He's in no condition to be wandering about the streets."

"Then Jerry really did need hospitalization?" inquired Penny.

"Certainly. He suffered shock and the doctor was afraid of brain injury.

The patient should have been kept under observation for at least twenty-four hours. Wandering off this way is a very bad sign."

"We'll get him back here p.r.o.nto!" Salt promised. "He can't have gone far."

In the lobby he and Penny paused to ask the receptionist if she had observed anyone answering Jerry's description leave the building.

"Why, no," she replied, only to correct herself. "Wait! A young man in a gray suit left here about twenty minutes ago. I didn't really notice his face."

"That must have been Jerry!" cried Penny. "Which way did he go?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't the slightest idea."

"Jerry may have gone to his room," Penny said hopefully. "Let's call his hotel."

Using a lobby telephone, they dialed the St. Agnes Hotel Apartments where the reporter lived. The desk clerk reported that Jerry had not been seen that night.

"Oh, where could he have gone?" Penny said as she and Salt left the hospital. "He may be wandering the streets in a dazed condition.

Shouldn't we ask police to try to find him?"

"Guess it's all we can do," the photographer agreed. "Jerry sure will be sore at us though."

A taxi cab pulled up near the hospital steps.

"Taxi?" the driver inquired.

Salt shook his head. "We don't know where we want to go yet. We're looking for a friend of ours who left the hospital about twenty minutes ago."

"A girl?"

"No, a man in a gray suit," Penny supplied. "He probably wasn't wearing a hat."