Jane Brown was having a shock.

She heard an unmistakable shuffling of feet in the corridor.

Sounds take on much significance in a hospital, and probationers
study them, especially footsteps. It gives them a moment sometimes
to think what to do next.

_Internes_, for instance, frequently wear rubber soles on their
white shoes and have a way of slipping up on one. And the engineer
goes on a half run, generally accompanied by the clanking of a tool
or two. And the elevator man runs, too, because generally the bell
is ringing. And ward patients shuffle about in carpet slippers, and
the pharmacy clerk has a brisk young step, inclined to be jaunty.

But it is the Staff which is always unmistakable. It comes along the
corridor deliberately, inexorably. It plants its feet firmly and
with authority. It moves with the inevitability of fate, with the
pride of royalty, with the ease of the best made-to-order boots. The
ring of a Staff member's heel on a hospital corridor is the most
authoritative sound on earth. He may be the gentlest soul in the
world, but he will tread like royalty.

But this was not Staff. Jane Brown knew this sound, and it filled
her with terror. It was the scuffling of four pairs of feet,
carefully instructed not to keep step. It meant, in other words, a
stretcher. But perhaps it was not coming to her. Ah, but it was!

Panic seized Jane Brown. She knew there were certain things to do,
but they went out of her mind like a cat out of a cellar window.