CHAPTER X. IN WHICH HE PROVES HIMSELF A HOST
“Winifred,” said R. P. Burns, invading Mrs. Arthur Chester's sunny living-room one crisp October morning, leather cap in hand, “I'm going to give a dinner to-night. Stag dinner for Grant, of Edinburgh—man who taught me half the most efficient surgery I know. He's over here, and I've just found it out. Only been in the city two days: goes to-morrow.”
“How interesting, Red! Where do you give it? At one of the clubs or hotels in town?”
“That's the usual thing, of course. That's why I'm not going to do it. Grant's a rugged sort of commonsense chap—hates show and fuss. He gets an overpowering lot of being 'entertained' in precisely the conventional style. He's a pretty big gun now, and he can't escape. When I told him I was going to have him out for a plain dinner at home he looked as relieved as if I'd offered him a reprieve for some sentence.”
“Undoubtedly he'll enjoy the relaxation. But you'll have a caterer out from town, I suppose?”
“Not on your life. Cynthia can cook well enough for me, and I know Ronald Grant's tastes like a book. But what I want to ask is that you and Martha Macauley will come over and see that the table looks shipshape. Cynthia's a captain of the kitchen, but her ideas of table decoration are a trifle too original even for me. Miss Mathewson's away on her vacation. I'll send in some flowers. My silver and china are nothing remarkable, bur as long as the food's right that doesn't matter.”
“I shall be delighted to do it for you, Red, as you know. So will Martha. We—”
“Thanks immensely. I want Ches of course, and Jim Macauley's coming. The rest are M, D.'s. I must be off.”
He would have been off, without doubt, in an instant more, for he was half out of the door as he spoke, but Winifred Chester flew after him and laid an insistent hand on his coat sleeve.
“Red! You must stop long enough to tell me something about it. How can I help you unless I know your plans? What hour have you set? How many are coming, and who? How many courses are you going to have? Have you engaged a waitress?”
Red Pepper looked bewildered. “Is there all that to it?” he inquired helplessly. “How in thunder—I beg your pardon—how do I know how many courses there'll be? Ask Cynthia that. The hour's seven-thirty; can't get around earlier, even if I wanted to be less formal. There's Van Horn and Buller and Fields and Grayson and Grant and Ches and Jim and—and myself. I may have asked somebody else, seems as if did but I can't remember. You'd better put on an extra plate in case I have.”
He was starting off again, but Winifred, laughing helplessly, again detained him. “Red, you're too absurd! What about the waitress? Shall I find one for you?”
“I supposed Cynthia could serve us; she always does me.”
“She can't to-night, and prepare things to send in, too.”
“Oh, well, see to it if you'll be so kind; only let me go, for I've only fifteen minutes now to meet a consultant ten miles away. Good-bye, Win.”
He took time to turn and smile at her, and for the sake of the smile—she knew of none other just like it—she forgave him for involving her in the labours she already clearly foresaw were to be hers. How precisely like Red Pepper Burns it was to plan for a “stag” dinner in this inconsequent way! If it had been a coming operation, now, no detail of preparation would have been too insignificant to command his attention. But in the present instance unquestionably all he had done was to appear at the door of the kitchen and casually inform Cynthia that eight or nine men were coming to dinner to-night, and he'd trust her to see that they should have something good to eat. Poor Cynthia!
Winifred ran over to consult Martha Macauley and together they braved Burns's housekeeper in her kitchen. The result was relief, as far as the dinner itself was concerned. Cynthia was a superior cook, and long experience with exclusively masculine tastes had taught her the sort of thing which, however out of the beaten line for entertaining, was likely to prove successful in pleasing “eight or nine men,” wherever they might hail from.
“Cynthia's planned a dinner that will be about as different from Lazier's concoctions as could be imagined,” Winifred said to Martha, “but it will taste what Ches calls 'licking good.' Now for the table. I'm afraid Red's china and linen are none too fine. We'll have to help him out there.”
They helped him out. Only the finest of Martha's linen and silver, the thinnest of Winifred's plates and cups and the most precious of her glass would content them. When the table was set in the low-ceiled, casement-windowed old dining-room where Red Pepper was accustomed to bolt his meals alone when he took time for them at all, it was a table to suggest arrogantly the hand of woman, Winifred eyed it with milled satisfaction and concern.
“It looks lovely, Martha, but not a bit bachelor-like. Do you suppose he'll mind?”
“Not as long as the food is right; and judging by the heavenly smells from the kitchen there's no fear for that. But it's five o'clock, and the flowers he promised you haven't come. Do you suppose he's forgotten?”
“Of course he has. If he remembers the dinner itself it'll be all we can expect of him. It doesn't matter. There are heaps of pink and crimson asters yet in the garden, and some fall anemones. We'll arrange them, and then if his flowers do come we'll change. But they won't.”
They didn't. But the pink and crimson asters furnished a centrepiece decidedly more in keeping, somehow, with a men's dinner than roses would have been, and the decorators were content with them. Dora, Mrs. Macauley's own serving maid, who was to take the part of the waitress Red Pepper had not thought necessary, said they looked “awful tasty now.”
“It's after seven and Red hasn't come yet.” Winifred Chester rushed at Arthur, dressing placidly. “Jim went in for the men with his car, and said he'd surely have them here by seven-twenty. You'll have to go over and do the honours for him till he comes. He'll have to dress after he gets here.”
“He won't stop to dress—not if he's late,” predicted Chester, obediently hastening. “He'll rush in at the last minute, smelling horribly of antiseptics, and set everybody laughing with some story. They won't care what he wears. It's always a case of 'where MacGregor sits, there's the head of the table,' you know, with Red. I certainly hope nothing will make him late. I'm not up to playing host to a lot of physicians and surgeons. I should feel as if I were about to be operated on.”
“Nonsense, dear, there's no jollier company when they're off duty. But Red isn't here yet, and I'm sure I hear Jim's Gabriel down the road. Do hurry!”
Chester ran across the back lawn and in through Burns's kitchen, startling Cynthia so that she nearly dropped the salt-box into a sauce she was making for the beefsteak. He reached the little front porch just in time to welcome the batch of professional gentlemen who came talking and laughing up the path together.
“Doctor Burns has been detained, but I'm sure he'll be here soon,” Chester explained, shaking hands, and discovering for himself which was the famous Scottish surgeon by the “rugged commonsense” look of the man, quite as R. P. Burns had characterized him.
Seven-thirty—no Red Pepper. Seven-forty-five—eight o'clock—still no sign of him; harder to be explained, no sign from him. Why didn't he telephone or send a telegram or a messenger? Waiting longer would not do; Cynthia, in the kitchen, was becoming unnervingly agitated.
The dinner was served. Chester, at one end of the table, Macauley at the other, both feeling a terrible responsibility upon them, did their best. There had turned out to be two extra guests instead of the one whom Burns had thought he might have asked but couldn't be sure; and Winifred had had a bad ten minutes looking out a full set of everything with which to set his place. For Red Pepper's place must certainly be left unfilled; it would be beyond the possibilities that the dinner should end without him.
“I believe he has forgotten,” whispered Martha to Winifred in the office, from whose dim shadows they were surreptitiously peering into the dining room to make sure that everything was going properly.
“Oh, he couldn't, not with the Edinburgh man here. He's often told us about Doctor Grant and how much he owes him. He does look splendid and capable, doesn't he—for all he's so burly and homely? And the other men all feel honoured to be here with him; even Doctor Van Horn, who's always so impressed with himself.”
“They seem to be having a good time. And they're eating as if they never saw food before. It's a success—as much as it can be without the host himself. Oh, why doesn't Red come?”
“He wouldn't desert a patient in a crisis for a dozen dinners.”
“No, but he'd send word.”
“Look at Arthur. He's hobnobbing with Doctor Grant as if he'd always known him.”
“Jim is having a bad time with Doctor Van Horn. I can see it in his eye. Mercy! one of them looked this way. I'm afraid he saw me. Come!”
The next time they reconnoitred, the dinner was working toward its end. It was time, for it was nearly ten o'clock, and Cynthia's courses though not many, had been mighty. Presently the table had been cleared, and the men were drinking coffee and lighting the excellent cigars which had been Macauley's thought when he found that Red Pepper was not on hand to provide them himself.
Under the influence of these genial stimulants—Burns never offered any others, and one man who knew it had declined to come—the sociability grew more positive. Chester relaxed his legs under the table, feeling that at last Red's guests could take care of themselves. Grayson proved an accomplished story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable adventures; even Ronald Grant, who had seemed a trifle taciturn, related an extraordinary experience of another man. The Scottish surgeon had the reputation of never talking about himself.
The smoke grew thick. Macauley's cigars were of a strong brand; the air was blue with their reek. Still the guests sat about the table, and still the talk went on.
It was interrupted quite suddenly by the advent of Red Pepper Burns himself. Macauley saw him first, standing in the doorway between dining room and office, but for an instant he did not know him. Macauley's startled look caught Chester's attention; he sprang to his feet. At the same moment the Scottish surgeon, following Chester's eyes, observed the figure in the door. He was first to reach it.
“What's happened ye, lad?” he asked, and acted without waiting for an answer. He threw a powerful arm about Burns's shoulders and led him, reeling, back into the office where the air was purer.
They crowded round, doctors though they were and had many times sharply ordered other people not to crowd. They could see at a glance that Burns was very faint, that his right arm hung helpless at his side, that his forehead wore a blackening bruise, and that his clothes were torn and covered with dirt. For the rest they had to wait.
Grant took charge of his friend—the pupil whom he had never forgotten. The arm was badly broken, too badly to be set without an anaesthetic. In the inner office Van Horn, his dress coat off, gave the chloroform while the Scotchman set the arm; and the American surgeons, no longer crowding, but standing off respectfully as if at a clinic, looked on critically. It was rapid and deft work, they admitted, especially since the surgeon was using another man's splints, and the patient proved to be one of the subjects who fight the anesthetic from beginning to end.
Chester, white-faced but plucky, stuck it out, but Macauley fled to the outer air. Seeing a familiar long, dark form half on, half off the driveway, he hurried toward it. A minute later he had all the unoccupied guests around him on the lawn, and one of the Green Imp's lamps was turned upon its crippled shape.
“By George, he's had a bad accident,” one and another of them said as they examined the car's injuries. The hood was jammed until they wondered why the engine was not disabled; the left running-board was nearly torn off and the fender a shapeless wreck. The green paint was scraped and splintered along the left side.
“He must have come home by himself. How far, do you suppose?”
“Not far, driving with his left hand, and faint.”
“He probably wasn't faint till he struck the indoor heat and the tobacco smoke.”
“He's come at least five miles. Look at that red clay on her sides. There's no red clay like that around here except in one place—at the old mill on the Red Bank road.” Chester demonstrated his theory excitedly. “I ought to know, I've ridden with him on every out-of-the-way by-path in the county, first and last. There's a fright of a hill just there.”
“Five miles with that arm? Gee!” This was Buller.
“Plucky,” was Grayson's comment, and there was a general agreement among the men standing round.
Macauley put his shoulder to the Imp. “Let's push her in, fellows,” he proposed. He had forgotten that they were medical gentlemen of position. “I don't seem to want to drive her just now,” he explained.
They pushed the Imp to the red barn and shut it in with its injuries. Then they went back to the house, where presently Burns came out from under his anaesthetic and lay looking at his guests from under the bandage which swathed his head.
“I'm mighty sorry to have broken up the fun this way, gentlemen,” he said with a pale sort of smile. “Grayson was telling a story when I butted in, I think. Finish it, will you, Grayson?”
“Not much. Yours is the story we want now, if you're up to telling it. What happened out there on the Red Bank road?”
Burns scanned him. “How do you know what road?”
“Your friend Mr. Chester's detective instincts. He says there's no other red clay like that that plasters your car. By the way, that's a fast machine of yours. Did you lose control on the hill?”
“That's it,” acknowledged Burns simply. “I lost control.”
Chester was staring at him. It was not in the nature of reason to suppose that Red Pepper had lost control of that car unless something else had happened first. The steering gear of the Imp was certainly in perfect condition; Macauley had said so. He wondered if Red meant that he had lost his temper. But what could make him lose his temper—on Red Bank hill?
They questioned him closely, all of them in turn. But that was all he would say. He had lost control of the car. One or two of the men who knew Burns least looked as if they could tell what was the probable cause of such loss of control. Chester wanted to knock them down as he fancied he recognized this attitude of mind. And at last they went away—which was certainly the best thing they could do in the circumstances.
All but Ronald Grant. The Scottish surgeon accepted without hesitation Burns's suggestion that Doctor Grant should stay and keep him company for an hour or two while he got used to his arm, and should then sleep under his roof. So they settled down, Burns on his couch, Grant in an armchair. When Chester left he was thinking that, except for the outward signs of his adventure, Burns did not look as unfit as might have been expected for a happy hour with an old friend.
Just outside the house Chester himself had an adventure. He was quite alone, and he almost ran into a slim figure on the walk. The lights from the office shone out into the October night, and Chester could see at a glance who the girl was, even if the gleam of golden hair which all the town knew had not told him. She was panting and her hand was on her side.
“Did Doctor Burns get home all right?” she cried under her breath.
“What do you know about Doctor Burns?” was Chester's quick reply. He was startled by the girl's appearance here at this hour.
“It doesn't make any difference what I know. Tell me if he got home. Was he much hurt? Why shouldn't you tell me that, Mr. Chester?”
“He is home and all right. Do you want him professionally? He can't go out to-night.”
“I know he can't. But I had to know he got home. I—”
She sank down on the doorstep, shaken and sobbing. Chester stood looking down at het, wondering what on earth he was to say. What had Rose Seeley to do with Red? What had she to do with his losing control on the Red Bank hill? A quick thought crossed his mind, to be as quickly dismissed. No, whatever Red's private affairs were, they could have nothing to do with this Rose—too bruised and trampled a rose to take the fancy of a man like him even in his most evil hour.
Suddenly she lifted her head. “He saved my life and 'most lost his. They'd been making repairs on the hill and, some way, the lanterns wasn't lit. It's an awful dark night. He saw what he was comin' to and turned out sudden into the grass. He had to go into the ditch, then, not to run over me—and somebody else. He ran away!” Plainly that scornful accent did not mean Burns. “I didn't. I helped him get the car up. I got his engine goin' for him; he showed me how. His arm was broke. There ain't no house for a mile out there. I hated to see him try to come home alone. I've walked all the way—run some of it—to make sure he got here.”
“He got here,” murmured Chester, thinking to himself that this was the queerest story he'd over heard, but confident he would never have any better version of it and pretty sure that it was the true one.
“I suppose I'm a crazy fool to tell you, Mr. Chester,” said the girl thickly. “But you're a gentleman. You won't tell. No more will he. He didn't tell you how it happened, did he?”
She did not ask the question. She made the assertion, looking to him for confirmation. Chester gave it. “No, he didn't tell,” he said gravely.
When she had gone he crossed the lawn to his own home, musing. “For a 'plain, quiet dinner,'” said he, quoting a phrase of Burns's used when he gave Chester the invitation, “I think Red's has been about as spectacular as they make 'em. Bully old boys.”
CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH HE GETS EVEN WITH HIMSELF
R. P. Burns sat at his desk in the inner office, laboriously inscribing a letter with his left hand. It did not get on well. The handwriting in the four lines he had succeeded in fixing upon paper bore not the slightest resemblance to his usual style; instead, it looked like the chirography of a five-year-old attempting for the first time to copy from some older person's script.
He held up the sheet and gazed at it in disgust. Then he glanced resentfully at his sling-supported right arm, especially at the fingers which protruded from the bandages in unaccustomed limp whiteness. Then he shook his left fist at it. “You'll do some work the minute you come out of those splints,” he said. “You'll work your passage back to fitness quicker than an arm ever did before, you pale-faced shirk!”
Then he applied himself to his task, painfully forming a series of pothooks until one more sentence was completed. He read it over, then suddenly crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it into the waste basket.
“Lie there!” he whimsically commanded it. “You're not fit to go to a lady.”
He got up and marched into the outer office where his office nurse sat at a typewriter, making lout bills.
“Miss Mathewson,” he requested gruffly, “please take a dictation. No, not on the bill letterheads—on the regular office sheets. I'll speak slowly. In fact, I'll probably speak very slowly.”
“I'm sorry I don't know shorthand,” said Miss Mathewson, preparing her paper.
“I'm not. Instead, I'd rather you'd be as slow as you can, to give me time to think. I'm not used to transmitting mediums—the battery may be weak—in fact, I'm pretty sure it is. All ready? My dear Mrs. Lessing”:
His cheek reddened suddenly as he saw the nurse's waiting hands poised over the keys when she had written this address. He cleared his throat and plunged in.
“This has been a typical November day, dull and cold. We had fine October weather clear into the second week of this month, but all at once it turned cold and dull. The leaves are all off the trees—Hold on—don't say that. She knows the leaves are all off the trees the middle of November.”
“I have it partly written.”
“Oh! Well, go on, then; I'll fix it: a fact it may be necessary to remind you of down there in South Carolina, where—Miss Mathewson, do you suppose the leaves are on in South Carolina?”
“I really don't know, Doctor Burns. I have always lived in the North.”
“So have I—bother it! Well, leave that out.”
“But I've written 'a fact it may be necessary—”
“Well, finish it: a fact at may be necessary to remind you of, you have been gone so long. Oh, hang it—that sounds flat! How can I tell how a sentence is coming out, this way? Let that paragraph stand by itself—we'll hasten on to something that will take the reader's mind off our unfortunate beginning:
“You will be glad to know that Bobby Burns is well, and not only well, but fat and hearty. He had a wrestling bout with Harold Macauley the other day and downed him. He got a black eye, but that didn't count, though you may not like to hear of it. He is heavier than when you saw him—Oh, I've said that! Miss Mathewson, when you see I'm repeating myself, hold me up.”
“I can't always tell when you're going to repeat yourself,” Miss Mathewson objected.
“That's enough about Bob, anyhow. Mrs. Macauley writes her all about him every week, only she probably didn't mention the black eye. Well, let's start a new paragraph. When in doubt, always start a new paragraph. It may turn out a gold mine.
“I found my work much crippled by the loss of my arm. Good Heavens, that sounds as if I'd had it amputated! And I suppose she naturally would infer that a man can't do as much with his arm in a sling as he can when it's in commission. Well, let it stand. I didn't realize how much surgery I was doing till I had to cut it all out. 'Cut it out,' that certainly has a surgical ring. It sounds rather bragging, too, I'm afraid. Never mind. The worst of it is to feel the muscles atrophying from disuse and the tissues wasting, so that when it comes out of the splints it will still have to be cured of the degeneration the splints have—Oh, hold on, Miss Mathewson—this sounds like a paper for a surgical journal!”
Burns, who had been walking up and down the room, cast himself into an armchair and stared despairingly at his amanuensis. But she reassured him by saying quietly that it was always difficult to dictate when one was not used to it, and that the letter sounded quite right.
“Well, if you think so, we'll try another paragraph—that's certainly enough about me. Let me see—” He ran his left hand through his hair.
Footsteps sounded upon the porch. Arthur Chester opened the door.
“Oh, excuse me, Red. It's nothing. I was going for a tramp, and I thought—”
“I'm with you.” Burns sprang to his feet looking immensely relieved. “Thank you, Miss Mathewson, we'll finish another time. Or perhaps I can scrawl a finish with my left hand. I'll take the letter. I'll look in at Bob and get my hat in a jiffy, Ches.”
He seized the letter, ran into the inner office, looked in at the dimly-lighted room where the boy was sleeping, took up a soft hat and, out of sight of Miss Mathewson, crammed the typewritten sheet into his pocket in a crumpled condition. Pulling the soft hat well down over his eyes he followed Chester out into the fresh November night, drawing a long breath of satisfaction as the chill wind struck him.
“You were just in time to save me from an awful scrape I'd got myself into,” he remarked as they tramped away.
“I thought you looked hot and unhappy. Were you proposing to Miss Mathewson by letter? It's always best to say those things right out: letters are liable to misinterpretation,” jeered Chester.
“You're right there. I was riding for a fall fast enough when you reined up alongside. But what's a fellow to do when he can't write himself, except in flytracks?”
“I presume the lady would prefer the fly-track to a typewritten document executed by another woman.”
“How do you know the thing was to a lady?” Burns demanded.
“That's easy. No man looks as upset as you did over a communication to another man. What do you write to her for, anyhow, when she's as near as Washington?”
“What?”
“Doesn't she keep you informed? Winifred says Martha says Ellen came back up to Washington yesterday for the wedding of a friend—hastily arranged—to an army officer suddenly ordered somewhere—old friend of Ellen's—former bridesmaid of hers, I believe. She—”
Burns had stopped short in the middle of the hubbly, half-frozen street they were crossing. “How long does she stay in Washington?”
“I don't know. Ask Win. Probably not long, since she only came for this wedding. It's tonight, I think she said. Aren't you coming?”
Burns walked on at a rapid stride with which Chester, shorter-legged and narrower-chested, found it difficult to keep up. They had their tramp, a four-mile course which they were accustomed to cover frequently together at varying paces. Chester thought they had never covered it quite so quickly nor so silently before. For Burns, from the moment of receiving Chester's news, appeared to fall into a reverie from which it was impossible to draw him, and the subject of which his companion found it not difficult to guess. After the first half mile, Chester, than whom few men were more adaptable to a friend's mood, accepted the situation and paced along as silently as Burns, until the round was made and the two were at Burns's door.
“Good night. Afraid I've been dumb as an oyster,” was Burns's curt farewell, and Chester chuckled as he walked away.
“Something'll come of the dumbness,” he prophesied to himself.
Something did. It was a telegram, telephoned to the office by a sender who rejoiced that having one's left arm in a sling did not obstruct one's capacity to send pregnant messages by wire. He had obtained the address from Martha Macauley, also over the telephone:
“Mrs. E. F. Lessing, Washington, D. C. Am leaving Washington to-night. Hope to have drive with you to-morrow morning in place of letters impossible to write. R. P. BURNS.”
“I suppose that's a fool telegram,” he admitted to himself as he hung up the receiver, “but after that typing mess I had to express myself somehow except by signs. Now to get off. Luckily, this suit'll do. No time to change, anyhow.”
He telephoned for a sleeper berth; he called up a village physician and the house surgeon at the city hospital, and made arrangements with each for seeing his patients during the two nights and a day of his absence. He had no serious case on hand and, of course, no surgical work, so that it was easier to get away than it might be again for a year after his arm should be once more to be counted on. Then he interviewed Cynthia on the subject of Bob; after which he packed a small bag, speculating with some amusement, as he did so, on the succession of porters, bell-boys, waiters and hotel valets he should have to fee during the next thirty-six hours to secure their necessary assistance, from the fastening of his shoes to the tying of his scarfs, the cutting up of his food, and the rest of the hundred little services which must be rendered the man with his right arm in a sling.
“I may not look a subject for travel, Miss Mathewson,” he announced with a brilliant smile, appearing once more in the outer office, where the bill-copying was just coming to a finish, “but I'm off, nevertheless. Thank you for your struggle with my schoolboy composition. We won't need to finish it. I'm—Oh, thunder!”
It was the office bell. Miss Mathewson answered it. Burns, prepared to deny himself to all ordinary petitioners, saw the man's face and stopped to listen. It was a rough-looking fellow who told him his brief story, but the hearer listened with attention and his face became grave. He turned to Miss Mathewson.
“Call Johnny Caruthers and the Imp, please,” he directed. “Telephone the Pullman ticket office and change my berth reservation from the ten-thirty to the one o'clock train.”
He went out with the man, and Miss Mathewson heard him say: “You walked in, Joe? You can ride back with us on the running-board.”
Ten minutes after he had gone Chester came again. He found Miss Mathewson reading by the office droplight. On the desk stood a travelling bag; beside it lay a light overcoat, not the sort that Red Pepper was accustomed to wear in the car, a dress overcoat with a silk lining. On it reposed a that and a pair of gloves rolled into a ball, man fashion. Chester regarded with interest these unmistakable signs of intended travel.
“Doctor Burns going out of town?” he inquired casually. It must be admitted that he had scented action of some sort on the wind which had taken his friend from his company at the conclusion of the walk. Ordinarily, Burns would have gone into Chester's den and settled down for an hour of talk before bedtime.
“I believe so,” Miss Mathewson replied in the noncommittal manner of the professional man's confidential assistant. “But he has gone out for a call now.”
“Back soon?”
“I don't know, Mr. Chester.”
“Did he go in the Imp?”
“Yes.”
“Country call, probably—they're the ones that bother a man at night as long as he does country work. I've often told Doctor Burns it was time he gave up this no-'count rural practice. Well, do you know what time his train goes?”
“After midnight, some time.” Miss Mathewson knew that Mr. Chester was Doctor Burns's close friend, but she was too accustomed to keep, her lips closed over her employers affairs to give information, even to Chester, except under protest.
“Hm! Well, I believe I'll sit up for him and help him off. A one-armed man needs an attendant. Don't stay up, Miss Mathewson. I'll take any message he may leave for you.”
“I'm afraid I ought to wait,” replied the faithful nurse doubtfully.
“I don't believe it. Go home and go to bed, like a tired girl, as you no doubt are, and trust me. If he wants you I promise to telephone you. I'll see him off and like to do it. Come!”
There being no real reason for doing otherwise than follow this most sensible advice, Miss Mathewson went away. Chester, settling himself by the drop-light in the chair she had vacated, fancied she looked a trifle disappointed and wondered why. Surely, he reasoned, the girl must get enough of erratic night work without sitting up merely to hand Burns his overcoat and wish him a pleasant journey.
It was a long wait. Chester enlivened it by telephoning Winifred that he wouldn't be home till morning—or sooner, and elicited a flurry of questioning which he evaded rather clumsily.
It was all right for him to be curious concerning Red's affairs, he considered, but there was no need for the women to get started on inquisitive questions.
He read himself asleep at last over the office magazines, and was awakened by a hurried step on the porch and a gust of November night air on his warm face.
“What are you doing here?” was the question which assaulted him.
“Sitting up for you,” was Chester's sleepy reply. He rubbed his eyes. “Thought you might like to have me see you off:”
“I'm not going anywhere except back to the case I've just left. Go home and go to bed.”
Chester sat up. He looked at Burns with awakening interest. He had never seen his friend's face look grimmer than it did now under the gray slouch hat, which he had worn for the tramp, pulled well down over his brows, and which, during all his preparations and his hasty departure in the car, it had not occurred to him to remove or to exchange for the leather cap he usually wore on such trips.
“Back to a country case instead of to Washington?” Incredulity was written large on Chester's face.
Burns nodded, growing grimmer than before, if that were possible. He sat down on the arm of a chair, glancing over at the desk where his belongings lay. “How did you know I was going to Washington?”
“Inferred it.”
“You're mighty quick at inference. Maybe I wasn't. But I was. Now I'm not. That's all there is to it.”
“But why not? Can't you turn the case over? I'll bet my hat it's a dead-beat case at that!”
Burns nodded again. “It is.”
“You're an ass, then.”
“Perhaps.”
“You don't expect—her—to stay in Washington waiting for you, do you, when she only came up for that wedding and is going straight back to keep some other engagements? That's what Win says she's to do.”
“No, I don't expect her to wait.” Burns pulled the slouch hat lower yet. Chester could barely see his eyes. He could only hear the tone of his denial of any such absurd expectation.
Chester rose and stood looking down at his friend, who had folded his left arm over his right in its sling, as he sat on the chair arm, and looked the picture of dogged resignation.
“I suppose there's some reason at the bottom of what strikes me as pure foolishness,” he admitted. “You won't do me the honour of mentioning it?”
“Case of infected wound in the foot. Threatened tetanus. Five-year-old child.”
“Nobody competent to treat the case but you?”
Burns looked up. Chester saw his eyes now, gloomy but resolute. “No. It's up to me alone. I owe it to the woman. It's the only child she has left: a girl. It was her boy I sent to a better world with maledictions on his mother's head.”
Comprehension dawned at last on Chester's face. He saw that, taking into consideration Burns's feeling in that matter, there was really nothing to be said. “I hope you win out,” he evolved at length from the confusion of ideas in his mind.
“I hope I do.” Burns rose. “I must send a telegram,” he said, and went to the telephone in the inner office.
While he was there Chester heard the honk of the Imp's horn outside. When Burns came back he opened the outer door and called to Johnny Caruthers, to know if he had obtained the serum for which he had been sent to the druggist. Johnny shouted back that he had. Burns turned to Chester.
“Good night,” he said. “Much obliged for waiting up for me.”
Then, with a certain fighting expression on his lips which Chester had learned to know meant that his whole purpose was set on the attainment of an end for which no price could be too great to pay, Burns went out to Johnny Caruthers and the Green Imp.
CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH HE HAS HIS OWN WAY
“Doc”—Joe Tressler followed Burns down the path, leaving his wife standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed, on the retreating figure of the man who had saved to her her one remaining child—“Doc, we ain't a-goin' to forget this!”
“Neither am I, Joe, for various reasons,” replied Burns, watching Johnny Caruthers try the Green Imp's spark. He jumped in beside Johnny and looked back at Joe. “Remember, now, keep things going just as I leave them, and I shall expect to find Letty nearly as well as ever when I see her again. I shall be back in five days. Good-bye.”
“Yes.”
“I'll be around when you get back, with some money.”
Burns looked the man in the eye. “Oh, come, Joe, don't say anything you don't mean.”
“I mean it this time, Doe—I sure do. Me and the old woman—we—Letty—” The fellow choked.
“All right, Joe. I'm as glad as you are Letty's safe. Take care of her. Take care of your wife. Do a stroke of good, back-breaking work once in a while. It'll help that tired feeling of yours that's getting to be dangerously chronic. You've no idea, Joe, what a satisfaction it is, now and then, to feel that you've accomplished something. Try it. Good-bye.”
He waved his hand at the woman in the door, who responded with a flutter of her dingy apron; which was immediately thereafter applied to her eyes. Within, by the window, a little pale-faced girl hugged a remarkable doll with yellow hair and a red silk frock.
“You'd ought to be pretty proud, Letty Tressler,” said the woman, returning to the small convalescent, “to think Doc kissed you when he left. He's been awful good to you, Doc has, and him with that arm in a sling a-bothering him all the time. But I didn't think he'd do that.”
“Maybe it's 'cause I'm so clean now,” speculated the child weakly. “When he did it he whispered in my ear that he liked clean faces.”
“Letty, you ain't goin' to have any kind o' face but a clean face after this, jest on account o' Doc Burns,” vowed her mother emotionally, and the child, her doll pressed against her face, nodded.
Far down the road Burns was bidding Johnny Caruthers put on more speed. “We have to make time to-day, Johnny,” he explained. “I'm going to get off on that ten-thirty to-night if I have to break my other arm to do it. I don't know that I'd be much more helpless than I am now if I did. Curious, Johnny, how many things there are a man can't do with one hand.”
“I should say you could do more with that left hand of yours than most folks can with both,” declared young Caruthers, honest admiration in his eye.
Burns laughed—a hearty, care-free laugh. He was in wild spirits, Johnny could see that, and wondered why the Doctor should be so happy over pulling a dead-beat family out of their troubles. Everybody knew Joe Tressler. And Johnny understood that the Doctor had given up going away on Joe's account ten days ago, when he took the case on the eve of his departure. Johnny had seen his employer in all stages of tension since that day, as he had driven him out, at first half-a-dozen times in the twenty-four hours, to this same little old wreck of a house. Johnny had driven him to other houses, also to one especially, in the city, where the lad had sat and speculated much on the extremes of experience in the life of a busy practitioner.
It was to this same house that Johnny took Burns next; a house reached by a long drive through wonderful grounds, to a palace of a home within which the man with his arm in the sling disappeared with precisely the same rather brusque and hurried bearing characteristic of him everywhere. But Johnny could not see within. If he had, his honest eyes might have opened still wider.
On his way upstairs Burns was intercepted by the master of the house.
“You've decided to go with us, Doctor Burns, I hope?” The question was put in the fashion of a person who expects but one answer. But the answer proved to be not that one expected.
“I'm sorry, but I can't do it, Mr. Walworth.” Burns's left hand, in the cordial grip which expresses hearty liking, was retained while William Walworth, who was accustomed to be able to arrange all things to his pleasure by the simple expedient of paying whatever it might cost, stared into the bright hazel eyes which met his with their usual straightforward glance.
“Can't'! But you must, my dear Doctor, Pardon me, but I feel that no ordinary considerations can be allowed to stand in the way. My daughter needs your care on this journey. Her mother and I have agreed that her wish to have you with us must be fulfilled. It's an essential factor in her recovery.”
“It's not essential at all, Mr. Walworth. Miss Evelyn is well started on the road to full health; she has only to keep on. My going with you would be a mere matter of pleasing her, and that's not in the least necessary.”
His smile softened the words which struck upon the ear of the magnate with an unaccustomed sound. Mr. Walworth released Burns's hand, his manner stiffening slightly.
“I must differ with you, Doctor. I feel that at this stage Evelyn's pleasure is a thing to be planned for. She has taken this fancy to have you with us on the Mediterranean cruise. We'll agree to land you and send you home at the end of a couple of months if you positively feel that you can't neglect your practice longer. But let me remind you, Doctor, that your fee will be made to cover all possible income from your practice during that time, and—I shall not be contented to measure its size by that.”
It was Burns's turn to stiffen within, if he did not let it show outwardly. He spoke positively and finally. Even William Walworth saw that it would be of no use to urge a man who said quite quietly:
“I've thought it over, as I promised you, and decided against it. I assure you I appreciate the honour you would do me, and I should immensely like the experience. But I know my going is not necessary to Miss Evelyn's recovery, and that's the only thing that could make me hesitate. I'll go up and see her at once, if you will forgive my haste. I have a busy day before me.”
William Walworth looked after him as he ran up the stately staircase, and his thoughts were somewhat as Johnny Caruthers's had been. “He's more of a man, crippled like that, than any I know. I wonder why he won't go. I wonder. But he won't, that's settled. Now to appease Evelyn. He'll not find that so easy.”
Burns did not find it easy. He sat down beside the convalescent, a patient who had everything on her side with which to win her chosen physician's consent to stay by her till she should be in the possession once more of the blooming beauty which had made her one of the envied of the earth. He told her, in the direct manner he had used with her father, that he could not fall in with their plans.
When he came away he was tingling all over. It had been so plain. She had tried to disguise it, but she was where she could not run to cover, and he had seen it all. It gave him no pleasure: he was not that sort. He was sorry for the girl, but he was not in the least anxious about her. She would get over it; it was not his fault—he was conscience-clear on that. If ever he had been coolly—however kindly—professional in his bearing it had been in this home of great wealth, where it would have gone against his inmost grain to have seemed to court liking. If anything, his orders had been more curt, his concessions fewer, his whole treatment of the case on simpler lines than it might have been in almost any less pretentious home with which he was familiar.
He ran down the stone steps in eager haste to be gone, his vision still engaged with the reproachful look Evelyn's mother had given him when she heard of his incredible refusal to accompany the Walworths on the luxuriously-equipped expedition in search of recuperation and enjoyment for the idolized only daughter. “This settles me with them to the end of time, I suppose,” he said to himself. As the car ran down the drive, he straightened his shoulders with a sense of thankfulness that his practice was not often in the homes of the comparatively few people who can afford to buy even that most precious of commodities, the time of others, when that time has been consecrated to certain uses.
“Not going to stop for lunch, Doctor?” inquired young Caruthers anxiously, as the round of calls went on and one o'clock passed, with the Imp in a portion of the city remote from the hotel at which Burns was accustomed to refresh himself and Johnny when home was out of the question.
“We'll go to the hospital next, and I shall be there a couple of hours. You can go and fill up then. I must be back at the office by four—for engagements.”
So the day went. The busy physician who goes out of town for even a five days' vacation must plan for it and do much arranging in various ways. In spite of the fact that it would still be many weeks before Burns could attempt surgery again, he was having plenty to do. Only the determination to get away this time without fail made it possible for him to go. But there would be never a time when he could better be spared, and he meant to let nothing hinder his purpose.
“The arm's coming on well,” was Doctor Buller's verdict late that afternoon as he gave the healing member its usual manipulation and massage. “It takes patience to wait, though, doesn't it, Burns? Never tried a broken arm myself, but I should say that hand must be itching to be at work in the operating-room again.”
“Itching! It's burning, blistering, scarifying! I never knew how I liked that part of my work till I had to come down to an exclusive practice in pills and plasters. Grayson's doing a stunt to-day that would have driven me mad with envy if I could have stopped to look on. Doing it cleverly, too, by the report I had from Van Horn just now. When Van takes the trouble to praise another man it means something.”
“Means it's been forced from him,” commented Buller. “Besides, Van enjoys praising Grayson to you. He's enjoyed your smashed arm, too, the old fraud. Was he ever so decent to you before?”
Burns laughed. “You can't strike fire that way today,” he declared. “Hold on! You're not going to put that arm back into the splints?”
“Of course I am. It lacks two days yet off the shortest modern regulation period. Come on here.”
“Leave 'em off. I'll take the consequences.”
“Don't be foolish, man. If I had my way I'd keep the thing put up another full week. I'm not an advocate of this hurry business.”
“I am. The arm's well enough to come out. I'll wear it in a sling, but I want my coat sleeve on, and I'm going to have it on. Fix me up, will you? I'm in a hurry.”
“You're going on a journey?”
“Yes. Get busy.”
“That's the very reason why you should keep that arm out of danger till you get back. Jostling round in a crowd.”
“Is this my arm or yours?” thundered Burns.
Buller laughed. “Don't knock me down with it, Pepper-pot. It may be your arm, but you're my patient, and I—”
“Don't you fool yourself. If you won't fix me up I'll go out with it hanging, I can judge my own condition. Will you dress me and put any arm in this sling here, or must I send for Grayson? He's none of your idiotic conservatives.”
“Keep quiet, and I'll make you look pretty, little boy. I see—these are new clothes just home from the tailor, and they're an elegant fit. Bully fresh scarf, peach of a pin, brand-new black silk sling—Oh, I say!”
For with his good left arm Burns was threatening his professional friend in a way that looked ominous. But a laugh was in his eye, now that he had got his way, and the altercation ended in a fire of jokes. Then Burns stood up.
“You're a jewel, Buller boy,” said he. “You've brought me through in great shape. It was a nasty fracture, and you've given me an arm that'll be as good as new. I'm grateful—you know that. Now, if you'll look over that list I gave you of cases here in the city, and go out once to take a look at Letty Tressler, I'll be ever faithfully yours. Griggs'll see to my village practice. Now I'm off.”
“Hope you enjoy your trip. Must be a concentrated pleasure, to be crammed into five days and still make you look like a schoolboy just let out,” observed Buller as Burns turned, with his band on the door-knob.
“A dose doesn't have to be big to be powerful,” rejoined Burns, opening the door.
“Nitro-glycerin, eh?” Buller called after the departing bulk of his friend. “Don't let it carry you too far up. You might come down with a thud!”
“He's right enough there,” was what Burns murmured to himself as he caught the elevator in the great building in which Buller's office was a crowded corner. “I may come down in just that style. But better that than any more of this dead level of suspense. I don't think I could stand that one more day.”
He and Johnny Caruthers whirled home in the Imp to find Burns's village office as crowded as Buller's city one. It was late before he could get his dinner, and after it he was kept busy turning calls over to other men. It was the usual experience to have work pile up during the last hours, as if Fate were against his breaking his chains and meant to tie him hand and foot.
“I'm going to get out of this right now,” he announced suddenly to Miss Mathewson an hour before train time, as he turned away from a siege over the telephone with one hysterical lady who felt that her life depended upon his remaining to see her through an attack of indigestion. “If I don't, something will come in that will pull hard to keep me home, and I'm not going to be kept. I'll trust you not to look me up for the next hour, for I'll not tell you where I'm going, and you can't guess, you know. Good-bye. Be a good girl.”
He wrung her hand, looking at her with that warmth of friendliness which he was accustomed, when in the mood, to bestow on her, recognizing how invaluable she was to him, and never once recking what it meant to her to be so closely associated with him. She answered in her usual quiet way, wishing him a safe journey and bidding him be very careful of the arm, no longer protected except by the silken sign that injury had been done.
“In a crowd, you know, they won't notice the sling,” she warned him.
“Won't they? Well, if my trusty left can't protect my battered right I've forgotten my boxing tricks. Don't be anxious about that, little friend. See that Amy Mathewson has a good time in my absence, will you? She's looking just a bit worn, to me.”
She smiled, but her eyes did not meet his: she dared not let them. With all his kindness to her he did not often speak with the real affection which was in his voice now. She understood that he was, for some reason, keyed high over his prospective journey even higher than he had been ten days before when on the point of leaving. And she knew well enough where he was going, though he had not told her. It would have taken thirty-six hours to go to Washington, spend a brief time there and return. It was going to take five days to go to South Carolina, remain long enough to transact his business—was it business?—and come back. And there had been no more attempts to write letters by way of an amanuensis. The affection for his assistant in his manner to her was genuine, she did not doubt that, but it did not deceive her for a moment. So, she did not let her eyes meet his. They rested, instead, on the scarfpin which Buller had termed a “peach,” but they did not see it. She could not remember when it had been so hard to maintain that quiet control of herself which had long since made her employer cease to reckon with the possibilities of fire beneath.
R. P. Burns stole away with Johnny and the Imp, without so much as letting his neighbours know of his intentions. He had made sure that they were all well; that no incipient scarlet fever or invading measles was threatening them. He smiled to himself as the car went past the Chester house, to think how interested they would be to know where he was going. But he got safely off and nobody opened a door at sound of the Imp to call to him to come in a minute because somebody seemed not quite well.
And then, after all, he ran upon Arthur Chester—and at the city station, to which he had taken the precaution to go, although the ten-thirty stopped for a half-minute at the village. It must be admitted that he tried to dodge his best friend, but he did not succeed. His shoulders were too conspicuous: he could not get away.
“Going to see an out-of-town patient at this hour of night?” queried Chester, coming up warmly interested, as best friends have a trick of being, in spite of all that can be done to avert their curiosity.
“Where else would I be going?”
“I don't know where else, but I doubt if it's to see a patient. There's an air about you that's not professional. You—er—you can't be going to Washington? There's nobody there now.”
“No, only a few Government officials and some odds and ends of hangers-on. To be sure, Congress is in session, but there's nobody there. My train's been called, Ches; so long.”
“Let me carry your bag.” Chester reached for it. “I say, this isn't a tool-kit—this is a stunner of a regulation travelling bag. See here, Red,” he was rushing along on the other's side, fairly running to keep up with Burns's strides—“how long are you going to be gone?”
“Long enough to get a change of air. The atmosphere's heavy here with inquisitive people who call themselves your friends. See here, Ches, you're not looking well. You need rest and sleep. Go home and go to bed.”
“You're always telling me to go home and go to bed. Not till I see which train you take,” panted Chester, his eyes sparkling. “Ha! Going to turn in at Number Four gate, are you? Sorry I can't take your bag inside. Well, possibly I can guess your destination. Got your section clear through to South Carolina? I say, keep your head, old man, keep your head!”
Burns turned about, shook his fist at Arthur Chester, seized his bag, rushed through the gateway and boarded the last of the long string of Pullmans. On the platform he pulled off his hat and waved it at his friend. He could forgive anybody for anything tonight.