"I'm almost afraid to go so fast, dear. If there should be another car on this road, we might collide at some of these sharp turns."

"But there isn't. There's not another automobile in this sleepy little town, except the Crosbys'. It isn't likely that they're out in theirs now, on this road."

But, as it happened, they were. After some difficulties at the start, Romeo had engineered "The Yellow Peril" out through a large break in the fence. The twins wore their brown suits with tan leather tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and, as planned long ago, the back seat of the machine was partially filled with raw meat of the sort most liked by Romeo's canine dependents.

Two yellow flags fluttered from the back of the driver's seat. One had the initials "C. T." in black, on the other, in red, was "The Yellow Peril." The name of the machine and the monogram were strikingly in evidence on the doors and at the back, where a choice cut of roast beef, uncooked, dangled temptingly by a strong cord.

Just before they started, Juliet unfastened the barn door and freed nineteen starving dogs, all in collars suited to the general colour scheme of the automobile, and bearing the initials: "C. T." When they sniffed the grateful odour borne on the warm June wind, they plunged after the machine with howls and yelps of delight. Only Minerva remained behind, having five new puppies to care for.

"Oh, Romie, Romie!" shouted Juliet, in ecstasy. "They're coming! See!"

Romeo looked back for the fraction of an instant, saw that they were, indeed, "coming," and then discovered that he had lost control of the machine. "Sit tight," he said, to Juliet, between clenched teeth.

"I am," she screamed, gleefully. "Oh, Romie, if uncle could only see us now!"

"Uncle's likely to see us very soon," retorted Romeo grimly, "unless I can keep her on the road."

But Juliet was absorbed in the joy of the moment and did not hear. A cloud of dust, through which gleamed bra.s.s and red, appeared on the road ahead of them, having rounded the curve at high speed. At the same instant, Allison saw just beyond him, the screaming fantasy of colour and sound.

"Jump!" he cried to Isabel. "Jump for your life!"

She immediately obeyed him, falling in a little white heap at the roadside. He rose, headed the machine toward the ditch at the right, and jumped to the left, falling face down in the road with his hands outstretched, Before he could stir, the other machine roared heavily over him, grazing his left hand and crushing it into the deep dust.

There was almost an instant of unbelievable agony, then, mercifully, darkness and oblivion.

XV

"HOW SHE WILL COME TO ME"

The darkness swayed but did not lift. There was a strange rhythm in its movement, as though it were the sea, but there was no sound. Black shadows crept upon him, then slowly ebbed away. At times he was part of the darkness, at others, separate from it, yet lying upon it and wholly sustained by it.

At intervals, the swaying movement changed. His feet sank slowly in distinct pulsations until he stood almost upright, then his head began to sink and his feet to rise. When his head was far down and his feet almost directly above him, the motion changed again and he came back gradually to the horizontal, sinking back with one heart-beat and rising with the next--always a little higher.

How still it was! The silence of eternity was in that all compa.s.sing dark, which reached to the uttermost boundaries of s.p.a.ce. It was hollow and empty, save for him, rising and falling, rising and falling, in a series of regular movements corresponding almost exactly to the ticking of a watch.

A faint, sickening odour crept through the darkness, followed by a black overwhelming shadow which threatened to engulf him in its depths. Still swaying, he waited for it calmly. All at once it was upon him, but swiftly receded. He seemed to sway backward out of it, and as he looked back upon it, gathering its forces for another attack, he saw that it was different from the darkness upon which he lay--that, instead of black, it was a deep purple.

The odour persisted and almost nauseated him. It was vaguely familiar, though he had never before come into intimate contact with it. Was it the purple shadow, that ebbed and flowed so strangely upon his dark horizon, growing to a brighter purple with each movement?

The purple grew very bright, then deepened to blue--almost black.

Dancing tongues of flame shot through the darkness, as he swung through it, up and down, like a ship moved by a heavy ground swell. The flames took colour and increased in number. Violet, orange, blue, green, and yellow flickered for an instant, then disappeared.

The darkness was not quite so heavy, but it still swayed. The javelins of flame shot through it continually, making a web of iridescence. Then the purple shadow approached majestically and put them out. When it retreated, they came again, but the colour was fainter.

The yellow flames darted toward him from every conceivable direction, stabbing him like needles. In this light, the purple shadow changed to blue and began to grow brighter. The sickening odour was so strong now that he could scarcely breathe. The blue shadow warred with the yellow flames, but could not put them out. He saw now that the shadow was his friend and the flames were a host of enemies.

All the little stabbing lights suddenly merged into one. He was surrounded by fire that burned him as he swayed back and forth, and the cool shadows were gone. The light grew intense and terrible, but he could not lift his hand to shade his eyes. Slowly the orange deepened to scarlet in which he spun around giddily among myriads of blood-red disks. The scarlet grew brighter and brighter until it became a white, streaming light. All at once the swaying stopped.

The intensity of the white light was agreeably tempered by a grey mist.

Through the vapour, he saw the outlines of his own chiffonier, across the room. A woman in spotless white moved noiselessly about. Even though she did not look at him, he felt a certain friendliness toward her. She seemed to have been with him while he swayed through the shadow and it was pleasant to know that he had not been alone.

On the table near the window, his violin lay as he had left it. The case was standing in a corner and his music stand had toppled over. The torn sheets of music rustled idly on the floor, and he wondered, fretfully, why the woman in white did not pick them up.

As if in answer to his thought, she stooped, and gathered them together, quietly sorting the pages and putting them into the open drawer that held his music. She closed the drawer and folded up his music stand without making a sound. She seemed far removed from him, like someone from another world.

Cloud surrounded her, but he caught glimpses of her through it occasionally. She took up his violin, very carefully, put it into its case, and carried it out of the room. He did not care very much, but it seemed rather an impolite thing to do. He knew that he would not have stolen a violin when the owner was in the same room.

Soon she came back and he was rea.s.sured. She had not stolen it after all. She might have broken it, for she seemed to feel very sorry about something. She was wiping her eyes with a bit of white, as women always did when they cried.

It was not necessary for her to cry, on account of one broken violin, for he had thousands of them--Stradivarius, Amati, Cremona; everything.

Some of them were highly coloured and very rare on that account. He had only to go to his storehouse, present a ticket, and choose whatever he liked--red, green, yellow, or even striped.

Everybody who played the violin needed a great many of them, for the different moods of music. It was obvious that the dark brown violin with which he played slow, sad music could not be used for the Hungarian Dances. He had a special violin for those, striped with barbaric colour.

The woman who had broken one of his violins stood at the window with her back toward him. Her shoulders shook and from time to time she lifted the bit of white to her eyes. It was annoying, he thought; even worse than the shadows and the fire. He was about to call to her and suggest, ironically, that she had cried enough and that the flowers would be spoiled if they got too wet, when someone called, from the next room: "Miss Rose!"

She turned quickly, wiped her eyes once more, and, without making a sound, went out on the white cloud that surrounded her half way to her waist.

He tried to change his position a little and felt his own bed under him.

His body was stiff and sore, but he had the use of it, except his left arm. Try as he might, he could not move it, for it was weighted down and it hurt terribly.

"Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose." The words beat hard in his ears like a clock ticking loudly. The accent was on the "Miss"--the last word was much fainter. "Rose Miss" was wrong, so the other must be right, except for the misplaced accent. Did the accent always come on the first beat of a measure? He had forgotten, but he would ask the man at the storehouse when he went to get the striped violin for the Hungarian Dances.

His left hand throbbed with unbearable agony. The room began to spin slowly on its axis. There was no mist now, or even a shadow, and every sense was abnormally acute. The objects in the whirling room were phenomenally clear; even a scratch on the front of his chiffonier stood out distinctly.

He could hear a clock ticking, though there was no clock in his room.

Afar was the sound of women sobbing--two of them. Above it a strange voice said, distinctly: "There is not one chance in a thousand of saving his hand. If I had nurses, I would amputate now, before he recovers consciousness."

The words struck him with the force of a blow, though he did not fully realise what they meant. The pain in his left arm and the sickening odour nauseated him. The cool black shadow drowned the objects in the room and crept upon him stealthily. Presently he was swaying again, up and down, up and down, in the all-encompa.s.sing, all-hiding dark.

So it happened that he did not hear Colonel Kent's ringing answer: "You shall not amputate until every great surgeon in the United States has said that it is absolutely necessary. I leave on the next train, and shall send them and keep on sending until there are no more to send.

Until a man comes who thinks there is a chance of saving it, you are in charge--after that, it is his case."

Day by day, a continuous procession came to the big Colonial house.

Allison became accustomed to the weary round of darkness, pain, sickening odours, strange faces, darkness, and so on, endlessly, without pity or pause.

The woman in white had mysteriously vanished. In her place were two, in blue and white, with queer, unbecoming caps. They were there one at a time, always; never for more than a few minutes were they together. When the fierce, hot agony became unendurable for even a moment longer, one of them would lean over him with a bit of shining silver in her hand, and stab him sharply for an instant. Then, with incredible quickness, came peace.

Once, when two strange men had come together, and had gone into the adjoining room, he caught disconnected fragments of conversation.

"Hypersensitive-impossible--not much longer--interesting case." He wondered, as he began to sway in the darkness again, what "hypersensitive" meant. Surely, he used to know.

Still, it did not matter--nothing mattered now. In the brief intervals of consciousness, he began to wonder what he had been doing just before this happened, whatever it was. It took him days to piece out the disconnected memories past the whirling room, the woman in white and the creeping shadows, to the red touring car and Isabel.

His heart throbbed painfully, held though it was by some iron hand, icy cold, in a pitiless clutch. Weakly, he summoned the blue and white woman who sat in a low chair across his room. She came quickly, and put her ear very close to his lips that she might hear what he said.