The rising bell clanged, Cherry carefully wrapped the covers around her ears, turned over and went back to sleep.

When she awoke again, her eyes fell on the clock and she leaped wildly out of bed. She had overslept a whole half-hour! It was really late! Half-asleep, she dashed automatically for the maple chest of drawers and collided with a chair instead. Then Cherry remembered. Of course — this wasn’t her old room — this was her new room in Crowley, the residence for seniors and graduate nurses! Starting this morning she was a senior — and she was late! Cherry scrambled into her clothes as the clock ticked loudly and warningly. She ran to the closet and pulled out a crisp blue and white striped uniform, with black chevrons on the shoulder. Late or not, Cherry stopped for breath and a moment’s gloating over those senior chevrons.

Then she dashed over to the mirror and slammed her nurse’s cap on her head. A breathless girl of twenty looked back at her — a slim, lovely girl with black eyes and black curls, and cheeks and lips so red they had earned her her name. She struggled to get her apron tied, but the bow balked. Outside in the corridor, instead of the usual bedlam of nurses, there was a pronounced silence — they all had left for breakfast long ago! “It’s still me,” Cherry marveled at her reflection. “Cherry Ames, from Hilton, Illinois, a senior and not changed a bit! Still tardy!”

Cherry sat cross-legged on her suitcase and tugged. There! The two stubborn locks finally clicked shut. This would make her new uniforms look like accordions and she mourned for the new blue dance dress. But at least they were in. Cherry puffed and with a toss of her head sent the dark brown curls off her glowing cheeks. Then she sat bolt upright on the suitcase and gasped.

“How do I look?” said Midge from the doorway. Billowing over her small figure was Cherry’s gray probationer’s uniform and crackling white apron, miles too big for her. From around the collar, her freckled face peered out, grinning impishly.

“Midge Fortune!” Cherry exploded. “You thirteen-year-old hazard! Unhand that uniform right away! Do you want to make me miss my train?” She darted after Midge and wormed her out of the dress. “And now I’ll have to battle with that suitcase again!” she groaned. She gave the squirming Midge a little shake. “Honestly, if you weren’t Dr. Joe’s daughter, I’d cut you up for stew and feed you to my worst enemy!”

“You haven’t got a worst enemy,” Midge pointed out calmly. She folded the garments with care and bravely attacked the suitcase. “And besides,” Midge went on, with a fine disregard for any connection, “your new red suit is the best-looking thing in Hilton.” She looked at Cherry admiringly.

And Cherry was well worth admiring. She was slender and healthy and well-built; she moved with a proud erect posture that made her seem beautifully tall and slim. Her eyes and her short curly hair were very dark, almost black — the clear-cut black that glistens. Groomed to crisp perfection, Cherry was as vivid as a poster in her red wool sports suit. And her face fairly sparkled with warmth and humor.

Staff Nurse Hilary Bell was rather disappointed when, after a bout of illness, she had to give up nursing for a year and take a ‘light duty’ job as first aid nurse in a big department store.

But Hilary was the kind of girl who always does her best in any job — and she was to get a splendid reward!

Are celebrities really like you and me under their trappings of glamour, wealth, and chauffered [sic] limousines? Red-haired Cathy Lewis, a skilled and devoted young private-duty nurse, was about to find out. She had accepted a position with New York’s Acme Celebrity Service, an exclusive agency that supplied the rich and the famous with personnel in every category, including nursing. And Cathy’s first assignment was to be a live-in nurse in the palatial hotel suite of famous movie star Roland Keating! The dark and handsome Roland was recuperating from open-heart surgery, and it was to be Cathy’s job not only to administer his medications but also to keep his presence in New York, and his condition, a secret.

When her services to Roland Keathing [sic] were abruptly terminated after an encounter with a press photographer, Cathy was assigned to care for a suicidal theater star and then a crusty old ex-diplomat whose house guest was a Middle-Eastern prince with hemophilia. As Cathy soon learned, Prince Akbar was the target of terrorists, who kept the mansion under constant surveillance.

Prince Akbar’s Secret Service man, Bob Baird, was obviously falling in love with Cathy. But she couldn’t get the special blood-stirring magic of Roland Keating out of her head or her heart. Did she have a chance with him? Cathy was to discover the answer to this and much more as she struggled to fulfill her duties as a celebrity nurse.

MINKS, MONEY, AND MURDER!

Steffanie Malden’s husband hadn’t been dead twenty-four hours when she showed up in Perry Mason’s office. Her diamonds sparkled, but there were no tears in her beautiful eyes.

According to her story, Dr. Malden had taken at least $100,000 in cash from fees and hidden it away in the love-nest apartment he kept for his nurse. The income tax people had been investigating but so far had no proof. She wanted Mason to settle the estate — including the taxes — and do whatever he thought best for her interests.

Mason should never have accepted her as a client. But she was out of his office before he fully realized what she really wanted him to do was lift that $100,000, hold it until things settled down and then split it with her. That [words obscured] taxes.

Perry Mason was a sucker, then. But it was a lot worse when Steffanie Malden was — ARRESTED FOR MURDER!