“Something happened while her brother was here. He left under a sort of shadow. Was shipped off to Santiago.”
“Well, not quite. But I heard things were terribly mixed up in his work. He was Chief Pharmacist’s Mate like your dad.”
“That’s what I haven’t been able to find out. But on several occasions I heard him and Lieutenant Cary having rather hot arguments. I could never get to the root of their trouble.”
“Then you think Lieutenant Cary had something to do with Dawson’s leaving the hospital?”
“I wasn’t there long before he left, but I liked him an awful lot.”
“Naturally Lieutenant Cary would resent Nurse Dawson being sent to the same base.”
“And he didn’t make any bones about showing it,” said Brad in disgust.
Kitty watched some couples go back to the dance hall as the band struck up again. After an interval she said, “Brad, I believe Dad knows something about all this.”
“He ought to, if anyone does. They put him in the position Dawson had filled.”
“He shut up like a clam when I told him what happened in the launch yesterday.”
Kitty sat turning the opal ring on her third finger, as she puzzled over the complications.
“You have nice hands—capable,” Brad told her.
“That’s from all the years of piano practice. You have to have piano, you know, along with voice training.”
She smiled up into his eager eyes. “I’d love to. But right now, Brad, I can’t think of anything but this queer business we’ve stumbled on. I have a queer feeling it may mean real trouble at the hospital.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s anything as serious as that. But I’ll tell you frankly I don’t trust Lieutenant Cary. He’s a man who’ll bear watching, all right. I heard that just a year before the war broke out he was studying surgery in Vienna and Berlin.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kitty was glad the sun was shining brightly Monday morning when she ran to the window to look out. She felt eager and ready to tackle the toughest sort of job. She could face her friends with new assurance now, for she was soon to be a part of the great army of workers dedicated to restoring peace to a troubled world.
For a while at least, while their gasoline allowance lasted, she was going back and forth in the launch, as that would save at least an hour each day in transportation time. Two other girls from the island were going to take the course with her and share those rides, so she felt justified in the use of gasoline. She had spent the early years of her life on the Gulf coast and was perfectly at home on the water. And how she loved it!