Part 27 (1/2)

He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard little object there. His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him reeling in his chair. A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he fell heavily backward on his bent arm.

His eyes opened. He drew a deep breath. A tall, carved clock in the corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have said something, for his voice was in the air.

”He must have had some papers--if there is anything wrong--good G.o.d, Webb, what shall we do?”

This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey. Weldon sprang to his feet, pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now. He was free! He was free!

The clock struck again.

Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and pressed them upon Webb.

”Here, gentlemen,” he cried breathlessly, ”are the papers you want!

And here,” he threw a small folded slip on the floor, ”is an explanation that may help you with them. I wish you good-day.”

To get out! To get out! He burst through the portieres and the door, as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it from without. In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with his snake-like eye. Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in the room and the group dissolved.

Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode down the corridor. He threw himself on the outside door and as he opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the great clock strike eleven. With a shudder he plunged across the threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.

THE LEGACY

Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody believes this or not. It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that I'm writing it, anyway. And n.o.body needs to get the idea that I think I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that. But there's not a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too. Not that he's c.o.c.ky about it, though.

”You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor,” I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), ”and I'll probably be a little shy on style.”

”Style be d.a.m.ned,” he said. ”You're long on facts, and that's all I want, my dear. And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that C----r's rot on me!”

I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it. I took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that. But of course they weren't.

”Just tell it as it happened, you know,” he said, ”and in your own language. I'd like to keep it.”

And of course anybody can do that. Although Mr. C----r told me once that that was the hardest job he ever tackled. He said he could write like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself. But he was always jos.h.i.+ng, that man.

”Why, Miss Jessop,” he used to say to me, ”if I could write like myself, I'd have won the n.o.bel prize any time this last ten years!”

But he wrote awfully well, I always thought. Hardly a patient I had that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:

”Oh, well, what's the last C----r's?” and when I got to the parts I'd taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!

It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case. He 'phoned me to drop in at the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been shopping with her all the morning. She had just invited me to go out to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue.

It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my own sister, almost. She was lovely.

But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes, though my suit-case was all packed for the country.

”That's good,” he said, ”for I specially want you. It's nothing to do, really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend. There's a family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through the country--New England, I believe. They've got a big, dressy car, and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the weather's reasonably good.”

”What do they want of a nurse?” I said.

”Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening,” he said.

”They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?”