Nevertheless, when I did go to the door again and peer into the corridor I was forced to realize that, whatever had happened, it was affecting a great deal more than the single inhabitant of Room 48.
Just then there was no one in sight, though in the distance I could hear a pervasive murmur of voices. There was a sound of shuffling footsteps, too, and occasionally a louder voice echoing hollowly in the corridors, but nothing like the din I had shut out before. This time I did not shout. I stepped out cautiously—why cautiously? I don’t know. There was just something that induced it.
It was difficult in that reverberating building to tell where the sounds were coming from, but one way the passage finished at an obscured French window, with the shadow of a balcony rail upon it, so I went the other. Rounding a corner, I found myself out of the private-room wing and on a broader corridor.
At the far end of the wide corridor were the doors of a ward. The panels were frosted save for ovals of clear glass at face level.
I opened the door. It was pretty dark in there. The curtains had evidently been drawn after the previous night’s display was over—and they were still drawn.
“Sister?” I inquired.
“She ain’t ’ere,” a man’s voice said. “What’s more,” it went on, “she ain’t been ’ere for ruddy hours, neither. Can’t you pull them ruddy curtains, mate, and let’s ’ave some flippin’ light? Don’t know what’s come over the bloody place this morning.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
Even if the whole place were disorganized, it didn’t seem to be any good reason why the unfortunate patients should have to lie in the dark.
I pulled back the curtains on the nearest window and let in a shaft of bright sunlight. It was a surgical ward with about twenty patients, all bedridden. Leg injuries mostly; several amputations, by the look of it.
“Stop foolin’ about with ’em, mate, and pull ’em back,” said the same voice.
I turned and looked at the man who spoke. He was a dark, burly fellow with weather-beaten skin. He was sitting up in bed, facing directly at me—and at the light. His eyes seemed to be gazing into my own; so did his neighbor’s, and the next man’s…
For a few moments I stared back at them. It took that long to register. Then:
“I—they—they seem to be stuck,” I said. “I’ll find someone to see to them.”
And with that I fled from the ward.
* * *
—
I was shaky again, and I could have done with a stiff drink. The thing was beginning to sink in. But I found it difficult to believe that all the men in that ward could be blind, and yet…
The elevator wasn’t working, so I started down the stairs. On the next floor I pulled myself together and plucked up the courage to look into another ward. The beds there were all disarranged. At first I thought the place was empty, but it wasn’t—not quite. Two men in nightclothes lay on the floor. One was soaked in blood from an unhealed incision, the other looked as if some kind of congestion had seized him. They were both quite dead. The rest had gone.
Back on the stairs once more, I realized that most of the background voices I had been hearing all the time were coming up from below, and that they were louder and closer now. I hesitated a moment, but there seemed to be nothing for it but to go on making my way down.
On the next turn I nearly tripped over a man who lay across my way in the shadow. At the bottom of the flight lay somebody who actually had tripped over him—and cracked his head on the stone steps as he landed.
At last I reached the final turn where I could stand and look down into the main hall. Seemingly everyone in the place who was able to move must have made instinctively for that spot, either with the idea of finding help or of getting outside. Maybe some of them had got out. One of the main entrance doors was wide open, but most of them couldn’t find it. There was a tight-packed mob of men and women, nearly all of them in their hospital nightclothes, milling slowly and helplessly around. The motion pressed those on the outskirts cruelly against marble corners or ornamental projections. Some of them were crushed breathlessly against the walls. Now and then one would trip. If the press of bodies allowed him to fall, there was little chance that it would let him come up again.