Part 28 (1/2)
”No, not so very,” replied the trained nurse cheerfully. ”But you must keep quiet if you are to get well quickly. The doctor will be in to see you soon.”
Joe sunk into a sort of doze, and when he awakened again the doctor was in his room.
”Well, how about me?” asked the young performer.
”You might be a whole lot worse,” replied the medical man with a smile.
”It's just a bad wrench and sprain. You'll be lame and sore for maybe two weeks, but eventually you'll be able to go back, risking your neck again.”
”Oh, there's not such an awful lot of risks,” Joe said. ”This was just an accident--my first of any account. I can't understand how my hands slipped off the bar. Guess I didn't put enough resin on them. How long will I be here?”
”Oh, perhaps a week--maybe less.”
”Did they bring my pocketbook--I mean my money?”
”You don't have to worry about that,” said the doctor. ”It has all been attended to. A Miss Morton made all the arrangements.”
”Oh,” was all Joe said, but he did a lot of thinking.
Joe's injury was more painful than serious. His sore muscles had to be treated with liniment and electricity, and often ma.s.saged. This took time, but in less than a week he was able to be out of bed and could sit in an easy chair, out on one of the verandas.
Of course Joe wrote to Helen as soon as he could, thanking her and his other friends for what they had done for him. In return he received a letter from Helen, telling him how she--and all of the circus folk--missed him.
There was also a card from Benny Turton, and a note from Jim Tracy, telling Joe that his place was ready for him whenever he could come back. But he was not to hurry himself. They had put no one in his place on the bill, simply cutting his act out. The Lascalla Brothers worked with another trapeze performer, who gave up his own act temporarily to take Joe's position.
”Well, I guess everything will be all right,” reflected our hero. ”But I'll join the show again as soon as I can.”
Joe was sitting on the sunny veranda one afternoon in a sort of doze.
Other convalescent patients were near him, and he had been listening, rather idly, to their talk. He was startled to hear one man say:
”Well, I'd have been all right, and I could have my own automobile now, if I hadn't been foolish enough to speculate in oil stocks.”
”What kind did you buy?” another patient asked.
”Oh, one of those advertised so much--they made all sorts of claims for it, and I was simple enough to believe them. I put every cent I had saved up in the Circle City Oil Syndicate, and now I can whistle for my cash--just when I need it too, with hospital and doctor bills to pay.”
”Can't you get any of it back?”
”I don't think so. In fact I'd sell my stock now for a dollar a share and be glad to get it. I paid twenty-five. Well, it can't be helped.”
Joe looked up and looked over at the speaker. He was a middle-aged man, and he recognized him as a patient who had come in for treatment for rheumatism.
Joe wondered whether he had heard aright.
”The Circle City Oil Syndicate,” mused Joe. ”That's the one Helen has her money in--or, rather, the one that San ford put her money in for her. I wonder if it can be the same company. I must find out, and if it is----”
Joe did not know just what he would do. What he had overheard caused him to be vaguely uneasy. His old suspicions came back to him.
CHAPTER XXII