"Why make an exception of me?"

"One reason is that I happen to like you. The other reason is that, whether you admit it or not, you are acting like a young idiot, and are putting the responsibility on the shoulders of some one else."

"She is responsible, isn't she?"

"Not in the least. How old are you, Joe?"

"Twenty-three, almost."

"Exactly. You are a man, and you are acting like a bad boy. It's a disappointment to me. It's more than that to Sidney."

"Much she cares! She's going to marry Wilson, isn't she?"

"There is no announcement of any engagement."

"She is, and you know it. Well, she'll be happy--not! If I'd go to her to-night and tell her what I know, she'd never see him again." The idea, thus born in his overwrought brain, obsessed him. He returned to it again and again. Le Moyne was uneasy. He was not certain that the boy's statement had any basis in fact. His single determination was to save Sidney from any pain.

When Joe suddenly announced his inclination to go out into the country after all, he suspected a ruse to get rid of him, and insisted on going along. Joe consented grudgingly.

"Car's at Bailey's garage," he said sullenly. "I don't know when I'll get back."

"That won't matter." K.'s tone was cheerful. "I'm not sleeping, anyhow."

That pa.s.sed unnoticed until they were on the highroad, with the car running smoothly between yellowing fields of wheat. Then:--

"So you've got it too!" he said. "We're a fine pair of fools. We'd both be better off if I sent the car over a bank."

He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called him to time sternly.

They had supper at the White Springs Hotel--not on the terrace, but in the little room where Carlotta and Wilson had taken their first meal together. K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with bad grace.

But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found him more amenable to reason, and, gaining his confidence, learned of his desire to leave the city.

"I'm stuck here," he said. "I'm the only one, and mother yells blue murder when I talk about it. I want to go to Cuba. My uncle owns a farm down there."

"Perhaps I can talk your mother over. I've been there."

Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became more normal, his restless hands grew quiet. K.'s even voice, the picture he drew of life on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in its mid-week dullness, seemed to quiet the boy's tortured nerves. He was nearer to peace than he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly, lighting one cigarette from another.

At ten o'clock he left K. and went for the car. He paused for a moment, rather sheepishly, by K.'s chair.

"I'm feeling a lot better," he said. "I haven't got the band around my head. You talk to mother."

That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the next day.

CHAPTER XXIV

Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care--not in black this time, but in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson's memory.

He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her voice that was only half a.s.sumed.

"It's very late," he complained. "Surely you are not going to be back at ten."

"I have special permission to be out late."

"Good!" And then, recollecting their new situation: "We have a lot to talk over. It will take time."

At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white, and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing.

But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.

When Wilson's car had gone on, he went automatically about his preparations for the return trip--lifted a seat cushion to investigate his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.

His coolness gratified him. He had been an a.s.s: Le Moyne was right. He'd get away--to Cuba if he could--and start over again. He would forget the Street and let it forget him.

The men in the garage were talking.

"To Schwitter's, of course," one of them grumbled. "We might as well go out of business."

"There's no money in running a straight place. Schwitter and half a dozen others are getting rich."

"That was Wilson, the surgeon in town. He cut off my brother-in-law's leg--charged him as much as if he had grown a new one for him. He used to come here. Now he goes to Schwitter's, like the rest. Pretty girl he had with him. You can bet on Wilson."

So Max Wilson was taking Sidney to Schwitter's, making her the b.u.t.t of garage talk! The smiles of the men were evil. Joe's hands grew cold, his head hot. A red mist spread between him and the line of electric lights.

He knew Schwitter's, and he knew Wilson.

He flung himself into his car and threw the throttle open. The car jerked, stalled.

"You can't start like that, son," one of the men remonstrated. "You let 'er in too fast."

"You go to h.e.l.l!" Joe snarled, and made a second ineffectual effort.

Thus adjured, the men offered neither further advice nor a.s.sistance. The minutes went by in useless cranking--fifteen. The red mist grew heavier.

Every lamp was a danger signal. But when K., growing uneasy, came out into the yard, the engine had started at last. He was in time to see Joe run his car into the road and turn it viciously toward Schwitter's.

Carlotta's nearness was having its calculated effect on Max Wilson. His spirits rose as the engine, marking perfect time, carried them along the quiet roads.

Partly it was reaction--relief that she should be so reasonable, so complaisant--and a sort of holiday spirit after the day's hard work.

Oddly enough, and not so irrational as may appear, Sidney formed a part of the evening's happiness--that she loved him; that, back in the lecture-room, eyes and even mind on the lecturer, her heart was with him.

So, with Sidney the basis of his happiness, he made the most of his evening's freedom. He sang a little in his clear tenor--even, once when they had slowed down at a crossing, bent over audaciously and kissed Carlotta's hand in the full glare of a pa.s.sing train.

"How reckless of you!"

"I like to be reckless," he replied.

His boyishness annoyed Carlotta. She did not want the situation to get out of hand. Moreover, what was so real for her was only too plainly a lark for him. She began to doubt her power.