Death in the Doll's House by Hannah Lees & Lawrence P. Bachmann

Author:Hannah Lees & Lawrence P. Bachmann [Lees, Hannah & Bachmann, Lawrence P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1943-01-15T21:00:00+00:00

MIMSY!” He was across the bathroom and lifting her, dripping, from the water before the cry was out of his mouth. A quick tug and the wet muslin band came loose from around her waist. He didn’t stop to see how the ends had come loose from the pipes he had tied them to. Time for that later.

Holding her in one arm, he pulled a blanket from the bed and laid it on the floor, kicking the edges out with his feet. He laid the child on it face down, her bluish and distorted face turned to the side. He reached for the call button at the head of the bed, pushed it in, and then he was kneeling over her body, his arms working smoothly and rhythmically. Place, press, rise, release, rest. Place, press, rise, release, rest. His arms pushed and let up.

His body rose and fell back, pumping the air back into Mimsy’s lungs and the water out, but his mind was darting jerkily around, trying to understand how this thing could have happened. That knot. He could almost see it as he had tied it less than an hour ago.

Maybe she had dragged herself down, he thought, as he kept up the rhythmic pumping. Maybe she couldn’t bear to go on living with this terrific burden she had been carrying for the last few days. There were reports of children as young as this trying to take their own lives, and perhaps the visit to her house this afternoon had been the last straw. But she couldn’t have dragged herself down. She couldn’t have pulled the knot loose, not the way he had tied it.

Someone had, though; someone, he registered all at once, must have deliberately come in and changed that knot. And not Ranny, his mind registered, but without exultation, because what a price to pay for proof of your innocence. Someone, and that disposed, too, of that horrible fantastic fear he had had about Mimsy and the gun. She couldn’t have done the shooting, if now someone else —— But where had Murphy been? Where was she now?

“Doctor Farragon.” Murphy coming breathlessly into the room at that moment saw him kneeling there. “Sure and I’m sorry as can be.” Her face was apologetic, but then she caught a glimpse of the small body under his arms and it took on a look of terror. “Why, God in heaven, what’s happened?”

“Someone tried to drown Mimsy while you were out of the room! Why did you leave her without calling a nurse? . . . No, don’t tell me now! Go out and call the first one you see! Tell her we need help! Nevermind!” as the door opened in the face of the older nurse, who was fumbling blindly for the handle. “Here’s one now. Just get some more blankets out of that drawer and cover her legs up.”

“You.” He looked up to see who had come, “Judy, what a break! Get some caffeine sodium benzoate and a lot of hot-water bottles.

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