So while Ruth bought pretty clothes and basked in happy antic.i.p.ations which for her took the place of memories, poor Larry walked in dark places and saw no single ray of light.

One afternoon he was summoned to the telephone to receive the word that there was a telegram for him at the office. It was Dunbury's informal habit to telephone messages of this sort to the recipient instead of delivering them in person. Larry took the repeated word in silence. A question evidently followed from the other end.

"Yes, I got it," Larry snapped back and threw the receiver back in place with vicious energy. His uncle who had happened to be near looked up to ask a question but the young doctor was already out of the room leaving only the slam of the door in his wake. A few moments later the older man saw the younger start off down the Hill in the car at a speed which was not unlike Ted's at his worst before the smash on the Florence road.

Evidently Larry was on the war path. Why?

The afternoon wore on. Larry did not return. His uncle began to be seriously disturbed. A patient with whom the junior doctor had had an appointment came and waited and finally went away somewhat indignant in spite of all efforts to soothe her not unnatural wrath. Worse and worse! Larry never failed his appointments, met every obligation invariably as punctiliously as if for professional purposes he was operated by clock work.

At supper time Phil Lambert dropped in with the wire which had already been reported to Larry and which the company with the same informality already mentioned had asked him to deliver. Doctor Holiday was tempted to read it but refrained. Surely the boy would be home soon.

The evening meal was rather a silent one. Ruth was wearing a charming dark blue velvet gown which Larry especially liked. The doctor guessed that she had dressed particularly for her lover and was sadly disappointed when he failed to put in his appearance. She drooped perceptibly and her blue eyes were wistful.

An hour later when the three, Margery, her husband, and Ruth, were sitting quietly engaged in reading in the living room they heard the sound of the returning car. All three were distinctly conscious of an involuntary breath of relief which permeated the room. n.o.body had said a word but every one of them had been filled with foreboding.

Presently Larry entered with the yellow envelope in his hand. He was pale and very tired looking but obviously entirely in command of himself whatever had been the case earlier in the day. He crossed the room to where his uncle sat and handed him the telegram.

"Please read it aloud," he said. "It--it concerns all of us."

The older doctor complied with the request.

_Arrive Dunbury January 18 nine forty_ A.M. So ran the brief though pregnant message. It was signed _Captain Geoffrey Annersley_.

The color went out of Ruth's face as she heard the name. She put her hands over her eyes and uttered a little moan. Then abruptly she dropped her hands, the color came surging back into her cheeks and she ran to Larry, fairly throwing herself into his arms.

"I don't want to see him. Don't let him come. I hate him. I don't want to be Elinor Farringdon. I want to be just Ruth--Ruth Holiday," she whispered the last in Larry's ear, her head on his shoulder.

Larry kissed her for the first time before the others, then meeting his uncle's grave eyes he put her gently from him and walked over to the door. On the threshold he turned and faced them all.

"Uncle Phil--Aunt Margery, help Ruth. I can't." And the door closed upon him.

Philip and Margery did their best to obey his parting injunction but it was not an easy task. Ruth was possessed by a very panic of dread of Geoffrey Annersley and an even more difficult to deal with flood of love for Larry Holiday.

"I don't want anybody but Larry," she wailed over and over. "It is Larry I love. I don't love Geoffrey Annersley. I won't let him be my husband. I don't want anybody but Larry."

In vain they tried to comfort her, entreat her to wait until to-morrow before she gave up. Perhaps Geoffrey Annersley wasn't her husband.

Perhaps everything was quite all right. She must try to have patience and not let herself get sick worrying in advance.

"He _is_ my husband," she suddenly announced with startling conviction.

"I remember his putting the ring on my finger. I remember his saying 'You've got to wear it. It is the only thing to do. You must.' I remember what he looks like--almost. He is tall and he has a scar on his cheek --here." She patted her own face feverishly to show the spot. "He made me wear the ring and I didn't want to. I didn't want to. Oh, don't let me remember. Don't let me," she implored.

At this point the doctor took things in his own hands. The child was obviously beginning to remember. The shock of the man's coming had snapped something in her brain. They must not let things come back too disastrously fast. He packed her off to bed with a stiff dose of nerve quieting medicine. Margery sat with her arms tight around the forlorn little sufferer and presently the dreary sobbing ceased and the girl drifted off to exhausted sleep, nature's kindest panacea for all human ills.

Meanwhile the doctor sought out Larry. He found him in the office apparently completely absorbed in the perusal of a medical magazine. He looked up quickly as the older man entered and answered the question in his eyes giving a.s.surance that Ruth was quite all right, would soon be asleep if she was not already. He made no mention of that disconcerting flash of memory. Sufficient unto the day was the trouble thereof.

He came over and laid a kindly, encouraging hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Keep up heart a little longer," he said. "By tomorrow you will know where you stand and that will be something, no matter which way it turns."

"I should say it would," groaned Larry. "I'm sick of being in a labyrinth. Even the worst can't be much worse than not knowing. You don't know how tough it has been, Uncle Phil."

"I can make a fairly good guess at it, my boy. I've seen and understood more than you realize perhaps. You have put up a magnificent fight, son.

And you are the boy who once told me he was a coward."

"I am afraid I still am, Uncle Phil,--sometimes."

"We all are, Larry, cowards in our hearts, but that does not matter so long as the yellow streak doesn't get into our acts. You have not let that happen I think."

Larry was silent. He was remembering that night when Ruth had come to him. He wasn't very proud of the memory. He wondered if his uncle guessed how near the yellow streak had come to the surface on that occasion.

"I don't deserve as much credit as you are giving me," he said humbly.

"There have been times--at least one time--" He broke off.

"You would have been less than a man if there had not been, Larry. I understand all that. But on the whole you know and I know that you have a clean slate to show. Don't let yourself get morbid worrying about things you might have done and didn't. They don't worry me. They needn't worry you. Forget it."

"Uncle Phil! You are great the way you always clear away the fogs. But my clean slate is a great deal thanks to you. I don't know where I would have landed if you hadn't held me back, not so much by what you said as what you are. Ted isn't the only one who has learned to appreciate what a pillar of strength we all have in you. However this comes out I shan't forget what you did for me, are doing all the time."

"Thank you, Larry. It is good to hear things like that though I think you underestimate your own strength. I am thankful if I have helped in any degree. I have felt futile enough. We all have. At any rate the strain is about over. The telegram must have been a knock down blow though. Where were you this afternoon?"

"I don't know. I just drove like the devil--anywhere. Did you worry? I am sorry. Good Lord! I cut my appointment with Mrs. Blake, didn't I? I never thought of it until this minute. Gee! I am worse than Ted. Used to think I had some balance but evidently I am a plain nut. I'm disgusted with myself and I should think you would be more disgusted with me." The boy looked up at his uncle with eyes that were full of shamed compunction.

But the latter smiled back consolingly.

"Don't worry. There are worse things in the world than cutting an appointment for good and sufficient reasons. You will get back your balance when things get normal again. I have no complaint to make anyway.

You have kept up the professional end splendidly until now. What you need is a good long vacation and I am going to pack you off on one at the earliest opportunity. Do you want me to meet Captain Annersley for you tomorrow?" he switched off to ask.

Larry shook his head.

"No, I'll meet him myself, thank you. It is my job. I am not going to flunk it. If he is Ruth's husband I am going to be the first to shake hands with him."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

IN WHICH TWO Ma.s.sEYS MEET IN MEXICO

And while things were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Ma.s.sey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the paper's expense while d.i.c.k Carson went down every day deeper into the valley of the shadow of death.

With the coming of Alan Ma.s.sey however a new era began. Alan was apt to leave transformation of one sort or another in his wake. It was not merely his money magic though he wielded that magnificently as was his habit and predilection, spent Mexican dollars with a superb disregard of their value which won from the natives a respect akin to awe and wrought miracles wherever the golden flow touched. But there was more than money magic to Alan Ma.s.sey's performance in Vera Cruz. There was also the magic of his dominating, magnetic personality. He was a born master and every one high or low who crossed his path recognized his rightful ascendency and hastened to obey his royal will.

His first step was to get the sick man transferred from the filthy hovel in which he found him to clean, comfortable quarters in an ancient adobe palace, screened, airy, s.p.a.cious. The second step was to secure the services of two competent and high priced nurses from Mexico City, one an American, the other an English woman, both experienced, intrepid, efficient. The third step taken simultaneously with the other two was to dismiss the man who masqueraded as a physician though he was nothing in reality but a cheap charlatan fattening himself at the expense of weakness and disease. The man had been inclined to make trouble at first about his unceremonious discharge. He had no mind to lose without a protest such a convenient source of unearned increment as those checks represented. He had intended to get in many another good carouse before the sick man died or got well as nature willed. But a single interview with Alan Ma.s.sey sufficed to lay his objections to leaving the case. In concise and forcible language couched in perfect Spanish Alan had made it clear that if the so-called doctor came near his victim again he would be shot down like a dog and if Carson died he would in any case be tried for man slaughter and hanged on the spot. The last point had been further punctuated by an expressive gesture on the speaker's part, pointing to his own throat accompanied by a significant little gurgling sound. The gesture and the gurgle had been convincing. The man surrendered the case in some haste. He did not at all care for the style of conversation indulged in by this tall, unsmiling, green-eyed man. Consequently he immediately evaporated to all intents and purposes and was seen no more.

The new physician put in charge was a different breed entirely, a man who had the authentic gift and pa.s.sion for healing which the born doctor always possesses, be he Christian or heathen, gypsy herb mixer or ten thousand dollar specialist. Alan explained to this man precisely what was required of him, explained in the same forcible, concise, perfect Spanish that had banished the other so completely. His job was to cure the sick man. If he succeeded there would be a generous remuneration. If he failed through no fault of his there would still be fair remuneration though nothing like what would be his in case of complete recovery. If he failed through negligence--and here the expressive gesture and the gurgle were repeated--. The sentence had not needed completion. The matter was sufficiently elucidated. The man was a born healer as has been recorded but even if he had not been he would still have felt obliged to move heaven and earth so far as in him lay to cure d.i.c.k Carson. Alan Ma.s.sey's manner was persuasive. One did one's best to satisfy a person who spoke such Spanish and made such ominous gestures. One did as one was commanded. One dared do no other.

As for the servants whom Alan rallied to his standard they were slaves rather than servants. They recognized in him their preordained master, were wax to his hands, mats to his feet. They obeyed his word as obsequiously, faithfully and unquestioningly as if he could by a clap of his lordly hands banish them to strange deaths.

They talked in low tones about him among themselves behind his back.

This was no American they said. No American could command as this green-eyed one commanded. No American had such gift of tongues, such gestures, such picturesque and varied and awesome oaths. No American carried small bright flashing daggers such as he carried in his inner pockets, nor did Americans talk glibly as he talked of weird poisons, not every day drugs, but marvelous, death dealing concoctions done up in l.u.s.trous jewel-like capsules or diluted in sparkling, insidious gorgeous hued fluids. The man was too wise--altogether too wise to be an American. He had traveled much, knew strange secrets. They rather thought he knew black art. Certainly he knew more of the arts of healing than the doctor himself. There was nothing he did not know, the green-eyed one. It was best to obey him.