Nurse at Mamoran Manor — Ruth McCarthy Sears

Pretty, brown-haired Susan Forrester's introduction to the mental institution where she was to do a year's post-graduate work came as a rude shock. For Mamoran Manor, an old ivy-covered mansion high on a cliff over the ocean, had just witnessed a murder of one of its employees -- a murder that was immediately hushed up and not reported to the authorities. Even Leo Aldous, the dark-haired doctor in charge of the patients -- retarded children and senile oldsters -- seemed reluctant to probe into the crime.

Susan tried to question everyone she could -- friendly Janet Fox, another nurse; Black Ben, the ubiquitous handyman; Millicent Mamoran, the gracious owner of the Manor; even Leo -- but all she received were evasive answers and an abrupt change of subject. Finally she was resigned to laying the matter aside and tending to the patients, some of whom seemed oddly out of place in such a confined atmosphere as Mamoran Manor.

When Leo took Susan into his confidence one day and told her that many patients were sane and had been brainwashed into a state of nonreason, they began to devise a way in which they could get these patients off the guarded premises -- without risking anybody's life -- but they had not reckoned on Millicent Mamoran's trickery or Black Ben's loyalty -- nor on the fact that Susan herself had fallen prey to Miss Mamoran's viselike control.