Then, on the afternoon of the third day, rolling back toward the elevator and the terra incognita which lay beyond, he saw a sign.  He stared at it blankly, because it interfered considerably with a plan he had in mind.  The sign was of tin, and it said: 

“No private patients allowed beyond here.”

Twenty-two sat in his chair and stared at it.  The plaster cast stretched out in front of him, and was covered by a grey blanket.  With the exception of the trifling formality of trousers, he was well dressed in a sack coat, a shirt, waistcoat, and a sort of college-boy collar and tie, which one of the orderlies had purchased for him.  His other things were in that extremely expensive English car which the city was storing.

The plain truth is that Twenty-two was looking for Jane Brown.  Since she had not come to him, he must go to her.  He particularly wanted to set her right as to Mabel.  And he felt, too, that that trick about respirations had not been entirely fair.

He was, of course, not in the slightest degree in love with her.  He had only seen her once, and then he had had a broken leg and a quarter grain of morphia and a burned moustache and no eyebrows left to speak of.

But there was the sign.  It was hung to a nail beside the elevator shaft.  And far beyond, down the corridor, was somebody in a blue dress and no cap.  It might be anybody, but again——­

Twenty-two looked around.  The elevator had just gone down at its usual rate of a mile every two hours.  In the convalescent parlour, where private patients en negligee complained about the hospital food, the nurse in charge was making a new cap.  Over all the hospital brooded an after-luncheon peace.

Twenty-two wheeled up under the sign and considered his average of ninety-seven per cent.  Followed in sequence these events:  (a) Twenty-two wheeled back to the parlour, where old Mr. Simond’s cane leaned against a table, and, while engaging that gentleman in conversation, possessed himself of the cane. (b) Wheeled back to the elevator. (c) Drew cane from beneath blanket. (d) Unhooked sign with cane and concealed both under blanket. (e) Worked his way back along the forbidden territory, past I and J until he came to H ward.

Jane Brown was in H ward.

She was alone, and looking very professional.  There is nothing quite so professional as a new nurse.  She had, indeed, reached a point where, if she took a pulse three times, she got somewhat similar results.  There had been a time when they had run something like this:  56—­80—­120——­

Jane Brown was taking pulses.  It was a visiting day, and all the beds had fresh white spreads, tucked in neatly at the foot.  In the exact middle of the centre table with its red cloth, was a vase of yellow tulips.  The sun came in and turned them to golden flame.

Jane Brown was on duty alone and taking pulses with one eye while she watched the visitors with the other.  She did the watching better than she did the pulses.  For instance, she was distinctly aware that Stanislas Krzykolski’s wife, in the bed next the end, had just slid a half-dozen greasy cakes, sprinkled with sugar, under his pillow.  She knew, however, that not only grease but love was in those cakes, and she did not intend to confiscate them until after Mrs. Krzykolski had gone.