There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?"

"Morning--eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen.

But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on, is nearer--"

"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip long. Twelve hours. . . . G.o.d!"

"I myself will meet you at Finlake. It's three miles farther to the quarry. If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night--"

"I--I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the doctor was adding further detail.

Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central.

Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice.

"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road."

"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What--" but the receiver had clicked into place.

Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as chalk.

A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain.

In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it punishment--punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting--

He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his forehead.

The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait?

"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr.

Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to be sure he's there."

Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal.

"Frank?" Hot relief surged in Kenny's heart at the chance ease of connection. "Kenny speaking."

"h.e.l.lo, Kenny. Nothing doing for me tonight, old man. I've got to sleep."

"I need you, Frank. Brian has been injured--badly--in a quarry explosion."

"Kenny!"

"A chance of skull fracture," said Kenny steadily. "That means?"

"A possible operation."

"Can you leave with me at eleven o'clock to-night, Pennsylvania Terminal? It will mean at least two days. He's at Finlake, Pennsylvania, barely conscious--in the hands of a country doctor."

The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and whistled. He worked and played at heavy pressure.

"Kenny, old man," he said, "nothing is impossible. Almost this is.

But it's you and Brian and that's enough, I'll meet you at quarter of eleven. I'll go--thoroughly prepared. Do you feel like telling me more?"

"No."

Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip dangerously.

Eleven o'clock. . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank G.o.d the studio was in order, save a chair or two. Brian . . . would . . . be . . .

pleased. Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked. An augury?

G.o.d forbid! Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous collection of receipted I.O.U.'s into his bulging suit case and called up Simon Meyer.

"Simon," he said, "whatever I happen to have there--there's a shotgun, I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. . . . The rest for the moment I can't recall. . . . I want you to put all of it in a bundle and send it here at once by special messenger. I have the tickets here. . . . I'll have them ready. . . . Yes, I'll give him a check. . . . No, Simon, it won't be certified and he'll take it as it is."

He rang off and searched impatiently for p.a.w.n tickets. Simon's messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the contents of the bundle and wrote a check.

Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead to eleven o'clock. It seemed to him then that he could not possibly wait and go on fighting for his self-control. A gust of sleet and hail swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor. Its cold, stinging contact with his face refreshed him. Kenny's brain cleared. He gulped and gasped. Garry's car! He would not wait.

"Frank," he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course--but we could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make unendurable delay. Shall I come for you in half an hour?"

Again Barrington gasped. Again he whistled. "Make it three quarters,"

he said, "and I think I can swing it."

"You're a jewel for sense," Kenny told him, a pa.s.sionate note of grat.i.tude in his voice. "I love you for it."

He called Ann's studio at six. Joan had not returned. Ann took the message, startled and sympathetic.

"I'll wire her in the morning," he said and, hanging up, found that Sidney Fahr had come in. He stood with his back against the door, his round face blank with terror.

"Kenny," he stammered, "I--I couldn't help hearing." The hot sympathy he could not bring himself to utter, flamed desperately in his face--almost to the ruin of Kenny's iron control. "I--I--I can do something, can't I, Kenny?"

"Yes, Sid, darlin', you can," said Kenny gently. "I'm taking Garry's car. You can square me with him."

"I--I'd even thrash him," mumbled Sid.

"Then if you will I'd like you to get in touch with Westcott's wife and tell her. I'm painting her portrait. She comes to-morrow at ten.

Sid, could you--could you clean off those two chairs?"

Sid fell upon the nearest chair with fearful energy. At the table Kenny hurriedly wrote a check.

"And to-morrow I want you to deposit this to Brian's account. I'm paying back--what I owe him." His mouth worked.

"Oh, Sid!" he said, his face scarlet.

"Now, now, now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on.

Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the composition of her face is all wrong."

He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door.

Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone.

"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar and watch me. I--I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down."