Part 39 (1/2)

”He is quite deaf from sh.e.l.l-shock, too!” said Dr. Smythe.

So this was Helen's cousin; therefore, Henriette's.

For a moment she was silent, with deep breaths, as if between impulses, before she dropped down beside the cot. Those hammers could not prevent Phil from knowing that a woman's hand was grasping his, a soft palm and slim fingers were pressing his tight, as if they would send a current of cheer through him. She could do that when he was so monstrous! If only the sh.e.l.l had finished him. With her other hand she was rolling up his sleeve; then she slipped her left hand in place of the right in his. Dr. Smythe and the nurse in attendance looked on in a spell of tragic curiosity.

Now Phil felt a finger moving on his arm. Sensitive little nerves--he had never known that there were such sensitive ones--followed the movement and carried the sense of their progress to the brain in spite of the hammers.

”I am trying to write so you will understand,” she slowly traced the letters. ”If you do, two pressures of the hand is yes.”

”Yes,” came the signal.

”He does!” said Helen, smiling up to Dr. Smythe in triumph.

”Ripping!” he said.

She repeated the message aloud, firmly, confidently, as she slowly wrote:

”I have good news. You will recover your hearing, speech, and sight completely. We have a miracle man here who will make you whole again, just the same that you were before except for a few little scars that will go away. You must just want to get well, in order to give the miracle man his chance and for the sake of your father and mother and those who love you.” And after the last word she hesitated, then wrote the letter ”H.”

Each letter surging along those sensitive nerves, and letters slowly spelling words. She could look at the monstrous sight that he was, at that gaping wound, and ask this of him! _She_ wanted him to live! So be it. He would not try to slip. The miracle man should have his chance. It was between the hammers on one side and her and the miracle man on the other.

”Wonderful! I admire your courage in saying it!” Dr. Smythe remarked thickly.

”But it will and must come true!” said Helen st.u.r.dily, as she rose to her feet and looked straight into his eyes, her own aflame with resolution. ”No one must even think the contrary.”

Another person had overheard the message written on Phil's arm as he looked around the corner of the screen. Lean he was and angularly built. His hair was brick-red, his face freckled, his age about thirty-five, and he had a smiling turn to the corners of his mouth. He had come down the aisle with a noiseless step, as if propelled by inexhaustible nervous vitality, and he had the air of a man with distinctly eccentric qualities, who would never stop on a street corner to ask anybody to tell him how to do his work. No second glance would be required to see that he was American--”corn-fed and from Kansas,” to use his own words.

”Well, picture girl, you seem to have put it up to me!” he said cheerily. ”You've made a lot of promises in my name; but that's just the kind of talk that helps.”

Bricktop examined the wound, while Helen studied his features; but she could tell nothing by them. She knew that there were cases which he refused to undertake, and nothing could change his mind. Too many ”possible” cases came back from the front behind the green curtains for him to waste time on the ”impossible.”

”Remember he is an American!” she whispered.

”So? What part?”

”New England and the Southwest.”

”That makes an all-round man. Not that gunner Sanford?”

”Yes.”

”Peter Smithers--but this is a little world.”

All the while his mind was on that wound: his talk an incidental byplay of his intense concentration. He began making quick, nervous little movements with his hands as if he were ill.u.s.trating a mechanical process in pantomime. When he had first appeared at the hospital this habit was considered gallery play; but most of the doctors had learned to believe in him, though some were still sceptical, as was Smythe in a measure. Here was a test. When Bricktop looked up he met professional inquiry in Smythe's eye.

”Can you?”

”Now, if I said that I could,” Bricktop replied, ”and I didn't, all the stick-in-the-muds would say there was one on me. I'm going to try.

It's amazing how bad it is and yet what there is to work with. But there's one thing--I don't know. Never had anything like it before. I can make him as good as he was--or it's a complete failure. I want him brought over to my place immediately. And you, picture girl, you are going to stand by and write cheerful messages on his arm?”

”Yes, always!” said Helen.

”As for his ears, eyes, and vocal chords--that is up to other sharps,”