The Shadow Girl by Ray Cummings

We left Nanette at home and Alan and I started for the Turber Hospital about three o'clock that same afternoon.

Was this the girl of our visions, now the "victim of amnesia" at Dr. Turber's Sanatorium? Or was it merely some other girl whose memory had gone, and whose prosaic parents soon would come to claim her? Things like that frequently happened. We determined to find out. Both of us were sure we would recognize her.

From the ferryhouse on Staten Island we took a taxi, a few miles into the interior. It was an intensely hot, oppressive afternoon -- the sun was slanting in the west when we reached our destination.

I found the Turber Hospital occupying a fairly open stretch of country, about a mile from the nearest town. It stood on a rise of ground -- a huge quadrangle of building, completely inclosing an inner yard. It was four stories high, of brick and ornamental stone; balconies were outside its upper windows, with occasional patients sitting in deck chairs with lattice shades barring the glare of sunlight.

There were broad shaded grounds about the building -- the whole encompassing, I imagined, some twenty or thirty acres. Trees and paths and beds of flowers. A heavy, ten-foot ornamental iron fence with a barbed wire top inclosed it all. A fence which might have been to keep out the public, but which gave also the impression of keeping in the inmates. The place looked, indeed, very much like the average asylum. There was an aura of wealth about it; but, unlike most such places, also a look of newness.

"Turber built it in the last eight years," said Alan. "He's doing very well -- rich patients of the neurotic, almost insane but not quite, variety."

There were some of them about the grounds now. Off at one end I could see tennis courts with games in progress.

"Spent a lot of money," I commented.

"Yes -- they say he's very rich."

Bordering the grounds was a scattered, somewhat squalid neighborhood of foreigners. We had crossed a trolley line and ascended a hill arriving at the main gateway of the institution. I glanced back through the rear window of our taxi. We were on a commanding eminence; I could see across the rolling country, over several smoky towns to New York Harbor; the great pile of buildings on lower Manhattan was just visible in the distant haze.

The gatekeeper passed us at Alan's request to see Dr. Turber. Our taxi swung up a winding roadway to the porte-cochere at the side of the building.

"Will he see us? " I demanded.

"If he's here, I imagine he will."

"But you're not, even outwardly, friends?"

He shrugged. "We speak pleasantly enough when we have occasion to meet. So long as he lets Nanette alone."

We were ushered into the cool quiet of a reception room. The white-clad nurse said that doubtless Dr. Turber would see us presently -- he was busy at the moment. She left us.

It was a fairly large room of comfortable wicker chairs; Oriental rugs on a hardwood, polished floor; a large wicker center table strewn with the latest magazines. A cool, dim room; there were broad French windows, with shades partly drawn and additionally shrouded with heavy velvet portieres across the window alcove.

We had seated ourselves. Alan drew his chair nearer to mine. He spoke softly, swiftly, with an eye upon the archway that gave onto the main lower corridor down which the nurse had gone.

"I was thinking, Ed -- when Turber comes -- we've got to have some excuse for seeing the girl."

"Yes, but what?"