A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Magnificent Obsession (1929)
Author:     Lloyd C. Douglas
eBook No.:  0400631h.html
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     HTML--Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          August 2004
Date most recently updated: August 2004

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

It had lately become common chatter at Brightwood Hospital--better known for three hundred miles around Detroit as Hudson's Clinic--that the chief was all but dead on his feet. The whole place buzzed with it.

All the way from the inquisitive solarium on the top floor to the garrulous kitchen in the basement, little groups--convalescents in wheeled chairs, nurses with tardy trays, lean internes on rubber soles, grizzled orderlies trailing damp mops--met to whisper and separated to disseminate the bad news. Doctor Hudson was on the verge of a collapse.

On the verge? . . . Indeed! One lengthening story had it that on Tuesday he had fainted during an operation--mighty ticklish piece of business, too--which young Watson, assisting him, was obliged to complete alone. And the worst of it was that he was back at it again, next morning, carrying on as usual.

An idle tale like that, no matter with what solicitude of loyalty it might be discussed at Brightwood, would deal the institution a staggering wallop once it seeped through the big wrought-iron gates. And the rumour was peculiarly difficult to throttle because, unfortunately, it was true.

Obviously the hour had arrived for desperate measures.

Dr. Malcolm Pyle, shaggy and beetle-browed, next to the chief in seniority, a specialist in abdominal surgery and admiringly spoken of by his colleagues as the best belly man west of the Alleghenies, growled briefly into the ear of blood-and-skin Jennings, a cynical, middle-aged bachelor, who but for his skill as a bacteriologist would have been dropped from the staff, many a time, for his rasping banter and infuriating impudences.

Jennings quickly passed the word to internal-medicine Carter, who presently met eye-ear-nose-and-throat McDermott in the hall and relayed the message.

"Oh, yes, I'll come," said McDermott uneasily, "but I don't relish the idea of a staff meeting without the chief. Looks like treason."

"It's for his own good," explained Carter.

"Doubtless; but . . . he has always been such a straight shooter, himself."

"You tell Aldrich and Watson. I'll see Gram and Harper. I hate it as much as you do, Mac, but we can't let the chief ruin himself."

* * * * *

Seeing that to-morrow was Christmas, and this was Saturday well past the luncheon hour, by the time Pyle had tardily joined them in the superintendent's office each of the eight, having abandoned whatever manifestation of dignified omniscience constituted his bedside manner, was snappishly impatient to have done with this unpleasant business and be off.

When at length he breezed in, not very convincingly attempting the conciliatory smirk of the belated, Pyle found them glum and fidgety--Carter savagely reducing to shavings what remained of a pencil, Aldrich rattling the pages of his engagement book, McDermott meticulously pecking at diminutive bits of lint on his coat sleeve, Watson ostentatiously shaking his watch at his ear, Gram drumming an exasperating tattoo on Nancy Ashford's desk, and the others pacing about like hungry panthers.

"Well," said Pyle, seating them with a sweeping gesture, "you all know what we're here for."

"Ab-so-lute-ly," drawled Jennings. "The old boy must be warned."

"At once!" snapped Gram.

"I'll say!" muttered McDermott.

"And you, Pyle, are the proper person to do it!" Anticipating a tempestuous rejoinder, Jennings hastened to defend himself against the impending din by noisily pounding out his pipe on the rim of Mrs. Ashford's steel waste basket, a performance she watched with sour interest.

"Where do you get that 'old boy' stuff, Jennings?" demanded Pyle, projecting a fierce, myopic glare at his pestiferous crony. "He's not much older than you are."

Watson tilted his chair back on its hind legs, cautiously turned his red head in the direction of Carter, seated next him, and slowly closed one eye. This was going to be good.

"Doctor Hudson was forty-six last May," quietly volunteered the superintendent, without looking up.

"You ought to know," conceded Jennings drily.

She met his rough insinuation with level, unacknowledging eyes.

"May twenty-fifth," she added.

"Thanks so much. That point's settled, then. But, all the same, he wasn't a day under a hundred and forty-six when he slumped out of his operating room, this morning, haggard and shaky."

"It's getting spread about too," complained Carter.

"Take it up with him, Doctor Pyle," wheedled McDermott. "Tell him we all think he needs a vacation--a long one!"

Pyle snorted contemptuously and aimed a bushy eye-brow at him.

"Humph! That's good! 'Tell him we all think,' eh? It's a mighty careless, offhand damn that Hudson would give for what we all think! Did you ever . . ." He pointed a bony finger at the perspiring McDermott, ". . . did you ever feel moved to offer a few comradely suggestions to Dr. Wayne Hudson, relative to the better management of his personal affairs?"

McDermott rosily hadn't, and Pyle's dry voice crackled again.

"As I thought! That explains how, with so little display of emotion, you can advise somebody else to do it. You see, my son,"--he dropped his tone of raillery and became sincere--"we're dealing here with an odd number. Nobody quite like him in the whole world . . . full of funny crotchets. In a psychiatric clinic--which this hospital is going to be, shortly, with the entire staff in strait-jackets--some of Hudson's charming little idiosyncrasies would be brutally referred to as clean-cut psychoses!"

The silence in Mrs. Ashford's office was tense. Pyle's regard for the chief was known to be but little short of idolatry. What, indeed, was he preparing to say? Did he actually believe that Hudson was off the rails?

"Now, don't misunderstand!" he went on quickly, sensing their amazement. "Hudson's entitled to all his whimsies. So far as I'm concerned, he has earned the right to his flock of phantoms. He is a genius, and whosoever loveth a genius is out of luck with his devotion except he beareth all things, endureth all things, suffereth long and is kind."

"Not like sounding brass," interpolated Jennings piously.

"Apropos of brass," growled Pyle, "but--no matter. . . . We all know that the chief is the most important figure in the field of brain surgery on this continent. But he did not come to that distinction by accident. He has toiled like a slave in a mill. His specialty is guaranteed to make a man moody; counts himself lucky if he can hold down his mortality to fifty per cent. What kind of a mentality would you have"--shifting his attention to Jennings, who grinned, amiably--"if you lost half your cases? They'd soon have you trussed in a big tub of hot water, feeding you through the nose with a syringe!"

"You spoke of the chief's psychoses," interrupted McDermott, approaching the dangerous word hesitatingly. "Do you mean that--literally?"

Pyle pursed his lips and nodded slowly.

"Yes--literally! One of his notions--by far the most alarming of his legion, in so far as the present dilemma is affected--has to do with his curious attitude toward fear. He mustn't be afraid of anything. He must live above fear--that is his phrase. You would think, to hear his prattle, that he was a wealthy and neurotic old lady trying to graduate from Theosophy into Bahaism. . . ."

"What's Bahaism?" inquired Jennings, with pretended naïveté.

"Hudson believes," continued Pyle, disdainful of the annoyance, "that if a man harbours any sort of fear, no matter how benign and apparently harmless, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost. For years, he has been so consistently living above fear--fear of slumping, fear of the natural penalties of overwork, fear of the neural drain of insomnia. . . . Haven't you heard him discoursing on the delights of reading in bed to three o'clock? . . . fear of that little aneurism he knows he's got--that he has driven himself at full gallop with spurs on his boots and burrs under his saddle, caroling about his freedom, until he's ready to drop. But whoever cautions him will be warmly damned for his impertinence."

Pyle had temporarily run down, and discussion became general. Carter risked suggesting that if the necessary interview with the chief required a gift for impertinence, why not deputize Jennings? Aldrich said it was no time for kidding. McDermott again nominated Pyle. Gram shouted, "Of course!" They pushed back their chairs. Pyle brought both big hands down on his knees with a resounding slap, rose with a groan, and sourly promised he'd have a go at it.

"Attaboy!" commended Jennings paternally. "Watson will do your stitches, afterwards. He has been getting some uncommonly nice cosmetic values, lately, with his scars; eh, Watty?"

The disorder incident to adjournment spared Watson the chagrin of listening to the threatened report of Jennings' eavesdropping, an hour earlier, on the dulcet cooing of a recently discharged patient, back to tender her gratitude. Emboldened by his rescue, he dispassionately told Jennings to go to hell, much to the latter's faunlike satisfaction, and the staff evaporated.

"Let's go and eat," said Pyle.

As they turned the corner in the corridor, Jennings slipped his hand under Pyle's elbow and muttered, "You know damned well what ails the chief, and so do I. It's the girl!"

"Joyce, you mean?"

"Who else?" Jennings buttoned his overcoat collar high about his throat and thrust his shoulder against the big front door and an eighty-mile gale. "Certainly, I mean Joyce. She's running wild, and he's worrying his heart out and his head off!"

"Maybe so," Pyle picked his footing carefully on the snowy steps. "But I don't believe it's very good cricket for us to analyze his family affairs."

"Nonsense! We're quite past the time for indulging in any knightly restraints. Hudson's in danger of shooting his reputation to bits. Incidentally, it will give the whole clinic a black eye when the news spreads. If the chief is off his feed because he's fretting about his girl, then it's high time we talked candidly about her. She's a silly little ass, if you ask my opinion!"

"Well, you won't be asked for your opinion. And it's no good coming at it in that mood. She may be, as you say, a silly little ass; but she's Hudson's deity!"

Jennings motioned him to climb into the coupé and fumbled in his pockets for his keys.

"She wasn't behaving much like a deity--unless Bacchus, perhaps--the last time I saw her."

"Where was that?"

"At the Tuileries, about a month ago, with a party of eight or ten noisy roisterers, in the general custody of that good-for-nothing young Merrick--you know, old Nick Merrick's carousing grandson. Believe me, they were well oiled."

"Did you--did she recognize you?"

"Oh, quite so! Came fluttering over to our table to speak to me!"

"Humph! She must have been pickled! I thought she was getting on, all right, at a girls' school in Washington. . . . Didn't know she was home."

Jennings warmed his engine noisily, and threw in the clutch.

"Maybe she was sacked."

Pyle made some hopeless noises deep in his throat.

"Too bad about old Merrick. . . . Salt of the earth; finest of the fine. He's had more than his share of trouble. Did you ever know Clif?"

"No. He was dead. But I've heard of him. A bum, wasn't he?"

"That describes him; and this orphan of his seems to be headed in the same direction."

"Orphan? I thought this boy's mother was living--Paris or somewhere."

"Oh yes, she's living; but the boy's an orphan, for all that. Born an orphan!" Pyle briefly reviewed the Merrick saga.

"Perhaps," suggested Jennings, as they rolled into the club garage, "you might have a chat with old Merrick, if he's such a good sort, and tell him his whelp is a contaminating influence to our girl."

"Pfff!" Pyle led the way to the elevator.

"Well, if that proposal's no good, why don't you go manfully to the young lady herself and inform her that she's driving her eminent parent crazy? Put it up to her as a matter of good sportsmanship."

"No," objected Pyle, hooking his glasses athwart his nose to inspect the menu, "she would only air her indignation to her father. And he likes people to mind their own business--as you've discovered on two or three occasions. He keeps his own counsel like a clam, and doesn't thank anybody for crashing into his affairs, no matter how benevolent may be the motive. . . . It would be quite useless, anyway. Joyce can't help the way she's made. She is a biological throwback to her maternal grandfather. You never knew him. He was just putting the finishing touches to his career as a periodical sot when I arrived in this town, fresh from school. Cummings was the best all 'round surgeon and the hardest all 'round drinker in the state of Michigan for twenty years; one of these three-days-soused and three-weeks-sober drunkards. This girl evidently carries an over-plus of the old chap's chromosomes."

"You mean she is a dipsomaniac?"

"Well--that's a nasty word. Let's just say she's erratic. Ever since she was a little tot, she has been a storm centre. Sweetest thing in the world when she wants to be. And then all hell breaks loose and Hudson has to plead with the teachers to take her back. Oh, she's given him an exciting life; no doubt of that! And lately it's booze!"

"Hudson knows about that part of it, of course!"

"I presume so. How could he help it? She makes no secret of it. At all events, she's no hypocrite."

Jennings sighed.

"Rather unfortunate she has this one embarrassing virtue; isn't it? But, that being the case, I dare say she'll have to go to the devil at her own speed. We must persuade Hudson, however, to clear out and take a long leave of absence. He can take her along. Lay it on with a heavy hand, Pyle. Be utterly ruthless! Tell him it affects us all. That ought to fetch him. I never knew anybody quite so sensitive to the welfare of other people. Save that card for the last trick: tell him if he doesn't clear out, for a while, he will do up the rest of us!"

* * * * *

For the first half hour of their conference, which was held in the chief's office the following Tuesday, Pyle stubbornly held out for a trip around the world, Joyce to accompany her father. Indeed, the idea had seemed so good that he had armed himself with a portfolio of attractive cruise literature. He had even made out an intriguing itinerary--Hawaii, Tahiti, ukeleles--Pyle was a confirmed land-lubber with a dangerously suppressed desire to lie on his back, pleasantly jingled, under a trans-equatorial palm, listening to the soft vowels of grown-up children unspoiled by civilization--the Mediterranean countries, six months of hobnobbing with brain specialists in Germany. The latter item had been included as a particularly tempting bait. Hudson had often declared he meant to do that some day.

The chief listened preoccupiedly; tried to seem grateful; tried to seem interested; but as Pyle rumbled on with his sales-talk the big man grew restless, refilled his fountain-pen, rearranged his papers in neater piles, had much difficulty hunting a match-box. Then he shook his head, smiling.

No, much as he appreciated Pyle's friendly concern, he wasn't going around the world; not just now. Of course he had been sticking at it too steadily. Lately he had had it on his mind to build a little shack in some out of the way place, not too far off, and put in there from Friday afternoon to Tuesday morning, at least in decent weather, tramp, fish, botanize, read light novels, sleep, live the simple life. He would begin plans on such a place at once. Spring would be along soon.

"And--meantime?" persisted Pyle, gnawing at the tip of his uptilted little goatee.

Hudson rose, slammed a drawer shut with a bang, swung a leg over the corner of his desk, folded his arms tightly, and faced his counsellor with a mysterious grin.

"Meantime? . . . Pyle, I hope this won't knock you cold. I'm going down to Philadelphia, week after next, to marry my daughter's school friend, Miss Helen Brent."

Pyle's eyes and mouth comically registered such stunned amazement that the Hudson grin widened.

"And then the three of us will be spending a couple of months in Europe. I've arranged with Leighton to come over from the university and take care of such head cases as Watson can't handle. Watson's a good man; bright future. Oddly enough, I was on the point of asking you in to talk this over when you said you wished to see me."

Pyle bit off the end of a fresh cigar and mumbled felicitations, not yet sufficiently recovered to pretend enthusiasm.

"Doubtless you think me a fool, Pyle."

Hudson took a turn up and down the room, giving his colleague an opportunity to deny it if he wished. Pyle puffed meditatively.

"Seventeen years a widower," mused Hudson, half to himself. He paused at the far corner to straighten a disordered shelf of books.

"A man accumulates a lot of habits in seventeen years." He returned to his desk-chair. "Sounds like the wedding of January and June, eh?"

Had Jennings been in Pyle's place, his eyes would have twinkled as he replied, "January! What! You? January? Nonsense, Chief! Not a day over October, at the farthest!"

Pyle smiled wanly, and shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth.

"I came by this valuable new friendship early last year when Miss Brent was made Junior advisor to my Joyce."

Something of sympathetic comradeship in Pyle's reviving interest, now that he was partially coming to, encouraged Hudson to toss aside what remained of his reticence and tell it all.

To begin with--Miss Brent was an orphan; parents reputable Virginians; most interesting French background on her mother's side; same kind of blood that the guillotine spilt in 1789. . . ." Quite pronouncedly Gallic, she is--at least in appearance."

Jennings, had he been there, would have been audacious enough to suggest, slyly chuckling, "Oh--in that case we should amend June to July!" Then he would have watched the chief's face intently.

But Pyle, who had no traffic with psychoanalysis, attached no significance whatever to the fact that the young lady's probable temperament was somewhat on the chief's mind.

"About Thanksgiving," Hudson was saying, "Miss Brent, after a brief encounter with influenza, left the school and spent a few days at home. No sooner was she gone than Joyce slipped out, one night; attended a party, down in the city; defied some house rules as to hours; flicked all her classes next day; stormed until the shingles rattled when they rebuked her; and, in short, contrived to get herself suspended, notwithstanding that her record--thanks to Miss Brent's influence--had been quite above reproach ever since she matriculated, a year ago last September."

The story went forward rather jerkily. Hudson was not given to confiding his perplexities to anybody. Pyle discreetly remained silent.

"Well--she came home and plunged immediately into a series of hectic affairs; out every night; in bed most of the day; nervous, testy, unreasonable. I can't tell you, Pyle, how thoroughly it did me in. . . . She's all I have you know.

"At my wit's end, I suggested that she invite Miss Brent up to visit us through the holidays. Twice before had she been our guest for a few days, and I had seen something of her on my occasional visits to Washington. Believe me when I tell you that this charming girl was no more than across our threshold last week, than Joyce was another creature, poised, gracious, lovable--a lady!"

He paused to take his bearings before going further; impelled to explain how the swift movement of events, that first evening at dinner, amply accounted for his decision to ask Helen to marry him; reluctant, even in the interest of plausibility and self-defence, to give words to the memory of that occasion. It had all been so natural; so unimpeachably right; so precisely as it ought to be! He had remarked--perhaps a bit more ardently than he intended, for his heart was full--how happy it had made him--and Joyce--that she had come. "I don't see how we can ever let you go!" he had said; to which Joyce had added impetuously, "Why need she ever go? She's happier here than anywhere else; aren't you, darling?"

Pyle recrossed his legs and cleared his throat to remind the chief that he was still present.

"As a matter of fact, Miss Brent is certain to be happier with us than she was at home. Since childhood, she has lived with an uncle, her father's elder brother, an irascible, penurious, not very successful old lawyer. There are no women in the family. And I have reason to suspect that her cousin, Montgomery Brent, is a bit of a rake, though she has idealized him out of all proportion; calls him 'Brother Monty,' thinks him vastly misunderstood by his father and everybody else . . . that kind of a girl, Pyle . . . espouses the cause of homeless cats, under dogs, misunderstood cousins, my flighty, wilful Joyce . . . and now--thank God--she has promised to join forces with me! I think she's making something of a mission of it, Pyle. I was quite willing to wait until she had finished school in June; had some serious misgivings, indeed, about that; but she dismissed the thought lightly. If I needed her, I needed her now, she said. . . . I hope to God it works out!"

Pyle said he believed it would; moved to the edge of his chair; looked at his watch; asked if this was a secret.

Hudson stroked his jaw, his eyes averted.

"I don't object to their knowing. . . . Let's consider it sufficient, for the present, that I'm going to Europe with my daughter." He mopped his broad forehead vigorously. "The rest of it they can learn in due time. Report to Aldrich and Carter and the others that I'm off on a vacation."

"Any special word for Mrs. Ashford, Chief?" Pyle paused with his hand on the door-knob.

Hudson thrust his hands deeply into his trouser pockets and walked to the window, staring out. "I'll tell her myself, Pyle," he answered, without turning.

* * * * *

Doctor Hudson named his isolated retreat Flintridge. It was quite remote from the beaten trail of travel. A mere acre had been tamed to serve the cottage for which his hasty sketches, before leaving, were elaborated and executed in his absence by his loyal friend, Fred Ferguson, the best architect in town.

It was an inhospitable bit of country, thereabouts. Sheer cliffs, descending abruptly to the black water (a long flight of wooden steps led to the little boat-house and adjacent wharf) had discouraged such colonization as had long since developed the western shore, two miles distant. Deformed pines clawed the rocks, sighing of their thirst in summer, shrieking of nakedness in winter.

Almost from the first, Flintridge never knew certainly, for there was no telephone, when its master would appear for a week-end. It anticipated, made forecasts, baked ineffable angel food cakes, caught vast quantities of minnows for bait, and held itself in instant readiness to welcome the big man with the ruddy face (just a shade too ruddy, any heart diagnostician could have told him), silver-white hair, grey eyes with deep crows-feet, and expressive hands eloquent of highly developed dexterity.

When and if he came, it would be on Saturday, late afternoon. Once only had he brought Joyce and Helen--strangers, passing them, presumed they were both his daughters--but that was merely temporizing with his promise to seek a retreat. And he now needed days off, if ever; for his young wife's gregarious disposition and charming hospitality had multiplied his social obligations in the city.

How easily she had adjusted herself to his moods! How proud he was of her, not quite so much for her exotic beauty, as because of her exquisiteness of personal taste and the tact with which she met the rather exacting problems of fitting neatly and quickly into his circle of mature acquaintances. It delighted him that she chose the right word, wore the right costume, intuitively knew how to manage a dinner-party without seeming concerned as to what misadventures might have occurred in the kitchen. Yes; the affair was "working out"--how often he used that phrase!--immeasurably better than he had dared hope.

Even the women liked her! They had accepted her on approval at first; but when it became evident that she had no intention of taking on airs because their grizzled spouses fluttered about her with the broad compliments privileged to fifty addressing twenty-five, they admitted she was a dear.

But, however pleasant it was for Hudson to note his wife's growing popularity, certified to by the increasing volume of their social activities, his new duties contributed little to the reinvigoration of that fatigued aorta which had worried Pyle.

"The chief's in better fettle--think?" said Jennings.

"Temporarily," conceded Pyle. "But you don't mend an aneurism with late dinners, three a week. I'm afraid he'll crash, one of these days."

Not infrequently some visiting colleague--for Brightwood now not only attracted patients from afar but had become a mecca for the ambitious in the field of brain surgery--would be driven out into the country to rusticate for a day or two. They seemed singularly alike, these brain-tinkers from otherwhere; moody, abstracted men, in their late forties and early fifties, most of them; seldom smiling, ungifted with small talk, not unusually inclined to be somewhat gruff. Hudson preferred to hold conferences with them at the lake, for their conversation would be tiresomely technical. And anyhow, men who trafficked daily with Death could not be expected to enliven a house party.

A devoted pair of middle-aged twins served as caretakers at Flintridge. What time Perry Ruggles, of the stiff knee, hairy throat, and Airedale disposition, was not tinkering the boat engine with greasy wrenches or trolling in and out of season for bass, he was teaching little patches of apathetic soil to take a maternal interest in iris and petunias. On Saturdays about five o'clock, he would put on his other coat and limp down to the gate that admitted from the narrow ridge road; and, having opened it, would flick little stones off the driveway with his good foot.

Martha, his buxom sister, wrought ingenious quilts, concealed from the taciturn Perry the vandalisms of an impertinent, bottle-fed fawn; was silly over a pair of tame pheasants whose capacity for requiting her affection was as feeble as her need was great; scratched her plump arms gathering early berries in anticipation of some high moment when her pie would be approved with a slow wink, of which the learned guest, profoundly discoursing of surgical mysteries to his celebrated host, would be entirely unaware.

On Saturdays, about four-thirty, having again made sure she had laid out the doctor's pyjamas on the bed, and turning the vase of roses on his chiffonier a little more to the advantage of the tallest, Martha would take her stand before the window in the sun-parlour, her knuckles pressed hard against her pretty teeth, devoutly praying for a swirl of yellow dust and a flash of glittering nickel at the bend of the ridge road, visible through an open lane of dwarf spruce.

At the sound of gravel crunching under heavy tires, she would dash to the door and fling it open, always hoping--and hating herself for it--that the doctor had come alone or, if not alone, accompanied by another man. She had been uneasy, abashed, and awkward in the presence of young Mrs. Hudson, whose beauty had stirred remembrance of a certain pre-Christmas shopping excursion when she was nine. . . . There had been a French doll, so beautiful it had made Martha's little throat ache with longing. Her wistful eyes had gushed sudden tears, and she had put out a hand, tentatively.

"No, dear," her mother had cautioned. "You may look at her, but you mustn't touch."

* * * * *

On the broad mantel in the "gun room" (there had been a bit of chaffing about the "gun room," seeing there was only one gun in it among all the miscellaneous instruments of sport--golf clubs, fishing tackle, and the like) an impressive row of silver cups testified that Wayne Hudson was no less expert at play than with the more important implements of surgery.

It was a frequent remark of his intimates that Hudson possessed an almost uncanny capacity for projecting the sensitiveness of his cognitive fingers to the very tips of whatever tools he chose to manipulate. There were nerves in his niblick, in his casting-rod, in his scalpel.

"A lucky devil!" bystanders used to remark when he had successfully made a long putt up-grade on a sporty green.

"An uncommonly good guesser!" his confrères agreed occasionally, when some quite daring prognosis--probably defining the exact location of a brain tumour on such cryptic evidence as the arc of an eyebrow, the twitch of a lip, the posture of a hand in repose, or the interjection of an unbecoming phrase into casual conversation--was verified.

Among the trophies on the mantel--whose inscriptions always amazed a visiting colleague, marvelling at his distinguished host's diversity of proficiencies--there was a tarnished triple-handled aquatic prize won by Doctor Hudson when, in the early days of his internship, he had taken a First in a mile swim.

"Still swim?"

"Regularly."

"Enjoy it?"

"Well--it's good for me."

"Keeps your weight down?"

"Perhaps. But, in any event, it's good for me."

Some time in the course of his visit, the visitor would rag his athletic host upon the excess of his prudence; for the most conspicuous article of furniture in the "gun room" was an elaborate but not very decorative inhalator of the super-type used by life-savers at busy wharves and crowded beaches, equipped with nickelled oxygen tanks and a complication of mechanical mysteries.

"What's that thing?"

Hudson would tell him, briefly, brusquely.

"What do you want with it?"

"Oh, somebody might fall in. The water's deep out here."

It was clear enough to the guest, if he ventured to press his queries, that Doctor Hudson did not enjoy any talk about aquatics. The guest found himself wondering why. Perry Ruggles could have explained, had he been disposed. There had once been a very anxious hour at Flintridge, down on the narrow pier. Not even Martha knew. The next time he had come out, Doctor Hudson had brought the inhalator, and had explained its use to the terrified Perry who thereafter stood in dread of the thing. It became a grim spectre that haunted his life. Some day, he suspected, he would be obliged to experiment with it. The responsibility constituted a steady, remorseless threat that tortured him and kept him awake nights. Some sharp, man-to-man candour had been handed to the surgeon, that afternoon, by his uncouth caretaker. It had been a long time since anybody had called Wayne Hudson a fool to his face. He accepted the degree with dignity.

"Perhaps I am, Perry," he replied soberly. "You probably wouldn't know. But, however that may be, the thing you're to keep in mind is that this top valve controls the oxygen; and if you have occasion to use it, don't get excited and forget."

* * * * *

Not a few men of importance to the surgical world resident in widely-spaced cities, recalled having had brief and somewhat disquieting conversations about swimming, while guests at Flintridge, when, one Sunday morning in early August, they read the front-page dispatch which reported that Doctor Wayne Hudson, widely known brain surgeon of Detroit, had drowned, the late afternoon before, near his summer place on Lake Saginack.

At their breakfast table in Seattle, Doctor Herman Bliss read the shocking headlines to his wife, and when she had commented sympathetically, he added:

"Not only very sad, my dear, but very strange!"

Pressed for explanation, he reviewed for her the incidents of a visit he had paid to his friend at the lake cottage, and the heavy constraint which had fallen upon their conversation when he had made some inquiries about his host's enjoyment of the water.

"Do you suppose," conjectured Mrs. Bliss, "that there could have lurked in his mind some vague mirage of the fate that waited for him?"

Her husband pursed his lips and shook his head. "I don't take much stock in such theories," he declared, almost too vehemently to be convincing.

"But you told me once that Doctor Hudson was 'prescient'!"

"Only a form of speech, Grace. Nobody is prescient. However, Hudson was extraordinarily sentient; psychic to an uncommon degree."

"But why did he persist in swimming," inquired Mrs. Bliss, "if he was afraid of it?"

"For that very reason, unquestionably. I never knew a man so impatient of normal people's timidities, or more passionately eager to make himself independent of fear. Doubtless this was the one thing that gave him anxiety, and he was resolved to master it."

"But--by the same logic," objected Mrs. Bliss, "he might have jumped off a precipice, if he found himself afraid of that."

"Not quite the same thing! Here was something he had been able to do with ease, skill and safety. Now, for some reason, he had suddenly become afraid of it. An experience of cramp, perhaps. . . . Might happen again. The fear filtered through his thinking. . . . Had prided himself on living in complete mental liberty. . . . Knew now that he was housing a dread! So long as he gave that phobia the hospitality of his mind, he would be, by that much, no longer his own man; so he decided to go to the mat with his antagonist. I fancy that explains."

The newspaper account further detailed that by a singular coincidence the inhalator which Doctor Hudson owned, and kept at his cottage, was in use on the other side of the little lake at the exact moment of his own tragic need of it.

A few hundred yards off shore, near his grandfather's estate, "Windymere," young Robert Merrick, alone in his sailboat, had been knocked unconscious by a jibbing boom and pushed into the water.

"Must have been drunk," indignantly commented Doctor Bliss. "Things like that don't often happen to sober people."

Excited bathers, informed that there was an inhalator at the Hudson cottage, had rushed a speed-boat across for it, and after an hour's heroic exertion, were successful in restoring the young man to partial consciousness. It was said that he would undoubtedly recover.

"Unquestionably! He would!" growled Bliss.

It was believed, said the dispatch, that had the inhalator been immediately available and promptly applied, Doctor Hudson's life might have been saved. The caretaker, Perry Ruggles, observing the evident distress of his employer, had rowed quickly to the spot, dived for him, dragged his limp body into the boat. Desperately, Ruggles had set forth with his unconscious passenger towards the Windymere beach, and had rowed until his strength failed. Small craft, attracted by his signals, hurried to him; found him huddled over the lifeless body of Doctor Hudson, weeping hysterically, while the little boat drifted in the middle of the lake.

"Never saw such dog-like devotion as old Perry's. I suppose he went in after him, clothes and all; bad leg too."

Robert Merrick, the paper continued to explain, was the only son of the late Clifford Merrick and Mrs. Maxine Merrick, now resident in Paris. He had only that day returned from an extended visit with his mother, having gone abroad immediately after finishing at the State University in the mid-year senior class. He was further identified as the grandson of Nicholas J. Merrick, retired founder and large stockholder of the Axion Motor Corporation, with whom he made his home at Windymere.

"Hope this youngster will be able to realize how valuable a person he is," said Doctor Bliss, putting down the paper, "now that he has had his life handed back to him at such a price!"

There was still another coincidence connected with this event. The village physician, suspecting that Merrick's head injury might be in need of more skilful examination than he could give it, had sent him in a swift ambulance to Brightwood Hospital. At that moment he did not know that the man who had made Brightwood famous for its brain surgery would be unable to see his young patient.

"What do you suppose the boy said," speculated Mrs. Bliss, "when he learned what it had cost to save his life?"

"Well," reflected the doctor glumly, "from my own observation of the type of young cub whose father is dead, whose mother lives in Paris, whose doting grandfather is a retired millionaire, and who gets himself bumped off his boat by a boom in broad daylight, I should suppose he just scratched a match on the head of his bed and mumbled, 'Whadda yuh know about that!'"

Slowly and carefully--for he was still limp from his battle with pneumonia, resultant from the prolonged use of a lung-motor in the inexperienced hands of excited people--two nurses had trundled young Merrick up to the well-appointed solarium.

"It won't hurt him a bit," Doctor Watson had said, "and there is at least the suspicion of a breeze upstairs."

Parking his chair in an alcove somewhat sequestered from the general assembly of convalescents, most of them white-turbaned like himself, his uncommunicative attendants had pattered quickly away as if relieved to be off to more pleasant undertakings.

Their scamper added to his perplexity. Yesterday he had tried to explain the prevailing taciturnity of the people who waited on him: it was the weather. The muggy, mid-August humidity accounted for it. If doctors were brief and brusque, nurses crisp and remote, it was because the patients were fretful . . . everybody out of sorts . . . naturally.

But, even so, something more serious than a low barometer ailed this hospital. Its moodiness was too thick to be interpreted by a murky yellow sky, the abominable rasp of cicadas in the dusty maples, or the enervating heat. Brightwood was in trouble; nor could Bobby shake off the feeling that he, himself, was somehow at the bottom of it; else why this conspiracy of mute glumness in their attitude toward him? My God! . . . He might as well have been some penniless bum, fished out of the gutter, and patched up for sheer humanity's sake. . . . Didn't they know who he was? . . . Why, his grandfather could buy up the whole works and never miss it!

It wasn't that they'd neglected him, he was bound to admit. Somebody had been always hovering over him. . . . God! . . . What a ghastly experience he had been through! . . . That fog . . . drifting in greyish-white, balloon-like billows across the road--impenetrable, acrid, suffocating--a damp, chilling, clinging cloud that pressed painfully against his chest, swathed his arms, clogged his feet. . . . That trip back from Elsewhere! . . . Would he ever live long enough to forget? It made him shudder to remember it! . . . That unutterable fatigue!

Sometimes it had been more than he could bear. After he had plodded, staggering, groping his way for a few shaky steps, the Thing would rush him, with a roar like heavy surf, and hurl him incredible distances back toward oblivion. Then the violence of the storm would subside, followed by an ominous silence. . . . Was he really dead, this time? . . . Suddenly, the Thing would swoop him up again and pitch him deeper into the stifling fog. . . .

After years and years of that--he had grown old and stiff and sore with his hopeless struggle--the situation had begun to clear. Now and again there were ragged rents in the fabric of the fog through which certain landmarks might be fleetingly recognized, as steeples and spires come up, faintly, on an acid-touched plate. These hazy perceptions were, at first, exclusively olfactory. He had read, somewhere, that the nose was more integrally a part of the brain than the other sense organs. Perhaps the smelling faculty (he had taken more than a casual interest in physiology) was the oldest of all the perceptive organs; earliest to evolve. But no; that would be feeling . . . feeling first, then smelling. . . . It had amazed and amused him that part of his mind seemed to be trudging alongside, analyzing the predicament of the rest of his mind, wading through the fog.

Now there had come a much wider gap in the drifting cloud, and through it breezed a combination of identifiable odours; strong scents crushed hard against his face; smell of good wool, and, buried in the wool, iodoform, cigarette smoke, chlorides of this-that-and-the-other, anæsthetics, antiseptics, laboratory smells, hospital smells.

A weight shifted about on his chest. It was warm. It throbbed. It pressed firmly, rested briefly, moved a little space, paused again, listened; went back to spots it had visited before; listened, more intently.

Then the weight had lifted and the medley of smells vanished. Through the next rift in the fog, voices were speaking from a vast distance; one of them calm, assured; the other bitter, unfriendly. . . . That had been the beginning of his perplexity. . . .

"I believe he's going to pull through!"

"Doubtless--and it's a damned shame!"

After that, there had been a complicated jumble of voices--one of them a woman's--before the fog closed in on him again. Occasionally, the cloud would tear apart, and he would take up his load . . . he seemed to be carrying some enormous weight . . . and plod on woodenly. He would have yawned, but deep breathing had gone out. They weren't doing it any more . . . quite too painful. One breathed in short, dry, hot gasps . . . glad to have them at the price. . . . Tom Masterson had confirmed that fact. . . . Tom--doubtless this was part of his delirium--Tom had sat by the bed; and, queried about the new style of breathing, remarked, "That's the way we're all doing it. . . . Not nearly so good as the old way, of course, but better than none."

Another smothering billow of fog had engulfed him; but the Thing wasn't in it. He didn't mind now, so long as the Thing was gone.

He opened his eyes and glimpsed a square of blue sky through a real window. The curtain fluttered. A motor churned in a court somewhere below; gears rasped, gravel scrunched. Ice tinkled in a glass, near at hand. A starched nurse, eyes intent on her watch, fumbled for his forearm. The sharp tip of a thermometer dug cruelly into the roots of his tongue. That was what ailed it, then--all this awkward gouging while he had been unconscious.

He had become aware of the steady drone of an electric fan, the metallic whir of a lawn-mower in parched grass; had dully explored his cracked lips with a clumsy tongue; had regarded with apathy the nurse who bent over him; and, after a few hoarse croaks, had contrived to ask where he was. She told him. Sluggishly, he surmised that his presence at Brightwood indicated there was something wrong with his head. There was; it ached abominably, and was bandaged. He felt of it gingerly, and inquired.

"A hard bump. But you are doing very nicely. Drink this, please!"

And then he had slept some more. A dim light was burning when he awoke. Everything was very quiet; so he decided to go to sleep again. Another day came . . . two or three of them, maybe . . . he couldn't remember.

A young, red-headed doctor, in a white coat, had appeared and asked some questions of the nurse. He seemed a friendly person . . . but young. Doctor Hudson was the big man at this place. If there was something the matter with his head, he wanted Hudson.

"I say," he had called, stiffly turning his eyes toward the doctor, "why doesn't Doctor Hudson look in? He knows me. I've been at his house. Does he know I'm here?"

"I'm Doctor Watson, Mr. Merrick. I'm looking after you. Doctor Hudson is not in the city. . . ."

After Doctor Watson had left the room, he had beckoned the nurse to the bedside. Had Miss Hudson called? . . . No; but that was because he wasn't seeing visitors yet . . . that is, not many. . . . Yes, his grandfather had been in . . . and a Mr. Masterson. . . . The accident? . . . Oh yes, they would tell him all about that, a little later. . . . What he needed now was sleep; lots and lots of it; no worry or excitement. . . . What we wanted now to make us well was sleep. . . . Then we could have visitors, and the visitors would tell us everything we wanted to know. . . . That kind of silly baby-talk! . . . Hell's bells!

This morning however he had grown impatient. These people were carrying their stupid silence strike too far! Obviously he had been in some sort of a scrape. Very well. . . . It was not the first time. There would be some way to settle it. There always had been. Was he not accustomed to paying for smashed fenders, broken china, splintered furniture, outraged feelings, and interrupted business? If anybody had a grievance, let him make a bill of it, and he would draw a cheque! It wasn't any of this hospital's business, anyway! Or . . . was it? . . . What could he have done to their damned hospital? . . . Run into it?

"Tell me this much, won't you, Miss . . . ?"

"Bates."

". . . Miss Bates; just how did I get this whack on my head? . . . And I won't ask you any more questions."

"There was a mast or something flew around and knocked you off a boat."

"Thanks."

A mast had knocked him off a boat! He grinned; tried to remember. Well--that was that; but how did the hospital get in it?

* * * * *

At noon, his nurse had been relieved for an hour by a no less important factotum that Mrs. Ashford herself, superintendent of the hospital.

She sat by the window with a trifle of needlework in her hands, apparently intent upon it; but quite aware of her patient's mood and expectant of an outburst.

Bobby studied her face and decided in its favour. It was a conclusion to which patients at Brightwood customarily arrived with even more promptness, but he was in no state of mind to lose his heart impetuously to anyone in this establishment where he was being treated with such contemptuous indifference.

He found himself guessing her age. Everybody indulged in such speculations on first sight of Nancy Ashford. Her maternal attitude toward the staff, the nurses, the patients, was premised solely upon her white hair. The fact that she had come by it in her early twenties, at the time of her husband's fatal illness, in no way discounted the matronly authority it gave her as the general counsellor at Brightwood. Notwithstanding her quite youthful face and slim, athletic figure, many people who outranked her in years called her mother--a perfect specimen of the type that instantly invites confidences. She had become a repository for a wider diversity of confessions than come to the ear of the average priest.

Doctor Hudson's tragic death had been a deeper sorrow to her than anybody connected with Brightwood was ever going to know certainly--whatever might be guessed; and the business of bearing it with precisely the right outward expression of regret was the most serious problem she had ever faced.

For fifteen years Mrs. Ashford had grown more and more indispensable to Doctor Hudson. Entering his experimental hospital as an operating nurse, shortly after the death of her husband--a promising young surgeon and a protégé of the brain specialist--she had quickly and quietly transferred many an administrative responsibility from her chief's shoulders to her own, almost without his realizing how deftly she had eased him of an increasing volume of wearisome details. The time came when her decisions represented the opinions of Doctor Hudson, and went unquestioned. Nobody was jealous of her influence over him, or of her calm authority over the institution. Improvident young internes sought her counsel in their troublesome business affairs. Nurses told her their love stories. Patients laid their hearts bare to her; confided everything from minor domestic perplexities to major crimes; wrote to her after they had gone home; not infrequently proposed marriage to her; deluged her with Christmas gifts.

"Isn't she sweet?" the women patients would say. She was not. The word was silly, applied to her. She was understanding, tactful, and, above all, strong; with the face of a young woman, the mind of a man, and the white hair of a matron.

There were some other things about Mrs. Ashford which, had young Merrick known, might have changed his attitude toward her that morning, as she sat jabbing her needle into the bit of tapestry and waiting for him to blow up.

Doctor Hudson had taken her for granted. He had grown accustomed to confiding every difficulty to her, and only rarely was he disposed to debate any of her opinions. There was no phase of his professional life to which she was a stranger. Even some of the strictly private enterprises to which he gave himself with stealthy concern--thinking them effectively concealed--she had discovered, either by chance or shrewd guess; and from that knowledge she had long since deduced at least a vague and troublesome idea of the motive back of them. He would have been amazed--perhaps somewhat annoyed--had he known that Nancy Ashford almost knew the one important secret of his life.

How deeply she cared for him, and the nature of that affection, the surgeon suspected, but resolutely refused to recognize. Anything like a mutual admission of their actual dependence upon and attraction for each other would, he felt, lead to unhappy complications. He could not marry her. Joyce would have disapproved.

"A nurse? . . . Why, Daddy! . . . You wouldn't! . . . You mustn't!"

On the morning that he told Nancy he was to be married the next Tuesday to Joyce's college friend, she had said quickly, "A very sensible thing to do. She will make you happy. I am so glad for you."

"I had hoped you might think that," he replied, obviously relieved.

Luckily for both, they were not facing each other. He was tugging on his rubber gloves, in the little laboratory adjacent to his operating-room, and she was buttoning his long white coat down the back. He pretended not to notice how long it was taking her.

"All right, back there?" he sang out, with attempted casualness, glancing over his shoulder.

"Quite all right now," she had answered, in a tone that matched his for lightness; but--it was not quite all right. . . . Nothing would ever be quite all right again.

Bobby had felt his heart warming toward the lady of indeterminate age who busied herself with the needle, evidently unaware of the tumult of his mind. He decided to disturb her peace. He would ask a few questions which he had been at some pains to compose. They sounded a bit bookish, as if memorized. . . . It was clear enough, he said, that he had been in some kind of a mess. He was forever getting into messes. That appeared to be his occupation. It was customary with him, he recited, with what sounded more like silly bravado than he had intended, to be in a bad scrape and not know the full particulars until the next morning. What was this one about? Had anybody else been hurt? He could not recall. If there were damages, he would gladly pay.

It had turned out to be a surly speech, as it progressed; mostly because Mrs. Ashford did not look up from her work, or seem properly attentive to the petulant complaint. Mistaking her effort at self-control for but another exhibition of the indifference under which he had fretted, Bobby grew irascible. In the very middle of a spluttery sentence however he broke off suddenly and regarded her with perplexity. As she raised her eyes to meet his, he saw that they were brimming with tears. Her lips trembled.

"What have I done?" he demanded huskily. "It's something very terrible. I can see that in your face. You've simply got to tell me. I can't stand this anxiety any longer!"

Mrs. Ashford put down her work on the table, came to the bedside, and taking one of Bobby's hands in both of her own said, "My friend, something has occurred here that makes us all very, very unhappy. It happened about the time that you came here. We are not recovered from it. But it was not your fault, and the damages cannot be settled. You need give yourself no further concern about it."

Not a bit satisfied, but assured by Mrs. Ashford's tone that their discussion was at least temporarily a closed incident, Bobby made no further effort to press his inquiries. He murmured his regrets that there had been any trouble and sank into his pillows, disquieted, but--whatever was the matter it was no concern of his. That was good. That was ever so much better than he had feared.

It had been a very welcome diversion, an hour later, when Doctor Watson had suggested the solarium. In the rumbling elevator, Bobby had made a feeble effort to be jocular. It was impossible that the grief which had seemed to distress the matronly Mrs. Ashford would be equally experienced by so young and pretty a girl as the slender blonde who stood at his elbow, silently awaiting their arrival at the top floor.

"I'll bet you a box of candy against a pleasant smile," he said, grimly, "that we do less talking in our hospital than any place else on earth."

Instantly he realized it was the wrong thing to have said to her. She did not challenge his statement. It was not that she was offended. It was rather as if she had not heard him. She was in trouble. She was in the same kind of trouble that affected everybody else in this hospital. It plunged him again into the gloom from which he had partly extricated himself through the not very reassuring statements of Mrs. Ashford.

Squelched to a shamed silence by the girl's rebuff, he gazed steadily ahead, conscious of flushed cheeks, as they wheeled him into the alcove, adjusted his pillows, half-lowered the blind, moved the screen closer to isolate him from the others and, without a word or a smile, hurried away.

He must have been there an hour or more before he learned what he thought he had wanted to know.

In the course of that hour, failing of scraping together enough remembered facts to be of any service in the solution of his problem, he had gone wool-gathering in all directions.

Perhaps it was his sense of utter desolation and loneliness that had set him going over the path of his singularly bitter childhood.

* * * * *

Bobby Merrick had grown up about as independent of the normal restraints imposed upon children as could have been possible in civilized society.

When he was a little lad, his father, Clif Merrick, had been too much occupied with business--what time he was not yacht racing, deer hunting, or on other journeys not quite so clearly explained--to pay any attention to the sensitive child beyond an occasional pat on the head as he passed him on the stairs in tow of a governess; or a brief and clumsy tussle in imitation of paternal playfulness. The big man was always half drunk when he made these rough overtures of comradeship. The boy dreaded seeing his father approach, of a late afternoon, with a flushed face, suggesting a good romp together.

On such occasions, if she was present, Bobby's neurotic mother usually intervened.

"You're much too rough with him, Clif," she would expostulate. "He's only a little boy. You hurt him! Stop it, I tell you!"

"Nonsense!" his father would reply, glancing toward the governess for approval, "you don't know anything about boys. Does she, Bobby?"

In all truth, she didn't; but the lad would be distressed over the episode, hardly knowing what answer was expected of him.

Once--how vividly he remembered this!--his mother, upon being sarcastically scorned in his presence for the way she was "bringing up a soft little mollycoddle, with his hands full of dolls and dishes" (true enough), had shocked him by screaming, in a shrill falsetto, "Leave him alone; damn you! I won't have you bullying him any more when you're drunk! You touch him again and I'll call the police!"

The police! For his father! Bobby remembered that it had made him ill--nauseated. The governess had had to carry him upstairs, where he was awfully sick. He even remembered what it was he had eaten--currant pudding. He had never cared much for currants thereafter.

Clif Merrick so steadily ragged the child, after that, about his girlish toys and trinkets, that Bobby himself revolted against the soft programme the women had made for him and gratefully approved when his father suggested boxing lessons. Strangely enough, he found himself happy with the new sport. Eager to test the value of the instruction he was receiving, he occasionally slipped away from the big house about time for school to be out in the afternoon, attired in an immaculate black velvet suit with white lace cuffs, and waited at the corner for somebody to yell "Sissy!" When he returned home he would be very dirty and greatly in need of repair, but grinning from ear to ear.

When he was twelve, Bobby's father had died suddenly of pneumonia brought on by exposure while duck hunting in nasty weather. Young as he was, the boy realized that his mother's bereavement was accepted by her with a calm fortitude out of all proportion to her weakness for indulging in self-pity.

One of her remarks, upon their return from the cemetery that bleak afternoon, was chiselled indelibly upon her son's mind. None of the epitaphs he had regarded with childish curiosity, as they drove slowly along the narrow, winding roads, was carved deeper. Sometimes, when he thought of it, he winced; sometimes he grinned.

"Well," she said, handing Colleen her furs, "that's that!"

"Yes, ma'am," dutifully replied Colleen, accustomed to occasional outbursts of caste-forgetful confidences vouchsafed by her mistress, "it certainly is!"

And then, apparently dissatisfied with her rejoinder, which had taken an almost too casual view of the matter for one who entertained so wholesome a respect for death, Colleen added, sepulchrally, "It must have been very hard, ma'am, to leave him out there."

Upon which followed the memorable elegy spoken by his mother.

"Well; I'll know now where he is!"

Sometimes, when, as a collegian, Bobby was at that exact state of intoxication where the tragic in a man's experience becomes distorted into broad, screaming farce, and even sacred memories make wry faces and put out their tongues in scorn of everything decent, he would recall his mother's elegiac comment, laugh uproariously, and pound his knee. "What a corking epitaph!" he had shouted once, and had instantly cursed himself for a drunken fool.

* * * * *

Bobby could not remember precisely when he had become conscious that his father and mother despised each other. It must have been while he was still a mere baby. By the time he was eight, they had stopped quarrelling, their mutual contempt too ponderous for so frail a vehicle as speech. Unquestionably she had suffered much; but it was no use trying to champion her cause. She was entitled to her son's pity, and had it. He would have been glad enough to have respected her, too, had that been possible.

Petulant, selfish, suspicious--Maxine Merrick was no end difficult. Her only proficiency was her skill as a pianist; and aware that it was the sole endowment she was in a position to transmit, she had begun to teach the child piano technique almost before he knew the letters on his building-blocks.

A restless soul, she was; temperamentally cursed with "floating anxiety"; pretty, after a fashion . . . a transparent blonde . . . always attracting attention at the opera where she quite took one's breath away with her beauty at thirty yards; given to fits of melancholy, for which there was plenty of excuse, God knew; dissatisfied with her own personality which she constantly endeavoured to improve, either by tinkering with her face and figure, or by taking her dishevelled mind to quack psychiatrists and will doctors for adjustments. She was on the sucker list of all the advertising mountebanks in town; talked seriously about palmistry; had paid a considerable sum for a horoscope which related her affairs somehow with the movements of Arcturus; frequently had her fortune told.

She vibrated between institutions for the care of the body and the cure of the soul. Having spent a busy season of assiduous devotion to the business of being plucked, picked, dyed, frescoed, and massaged; sitting long and painful hours in the studios of beauty experts, Maxine would suddenly experience an unaccountable surge of disgust, and make off hurriedly to some sanitarium de luxe where, in seclusion almost conventional, she lived on unsalted insipidities, and listened of evenings in the lounge to mellifluous harangues on personality expression . . . nerves in order . . . the will to live . . . life at its utmost; followed by less sidereal comments by the chief of staff concerning the importance of internal purity--not of the conscience, which was out of his field, as the piracy of his bills attested--but of the colon, to which he referred with a bland candour somewhat disconcerting to the newer arrivals, still serving their novitiate in the by no means unexacting vocation of hypochondria.

During these spells of improving her health and personality, Maxine would lose many pounds and add as many new words to her pathological vocabulary. It suited her mood, during such retreats, to become as disdainful of her appearance as a Thibetan lama.

One day, for no apparent reason other than caprice, there would be a flurry of trunks and boxes, tickets and taxis, and a swift return home, to the utter consternation of yogis who had been fattening on her patronage, and the indignant amazement of pallid charlatans whose income would be alarmingly depleted by the sudden demobilization of her crusade for the Perpetual Light. It would be generally rumoured among the patients that Mrs. Merrick was a brilliant social leader . . . "simply required, my dear, to stop and rest for a few weeks, now and then, if you know what I mean" . . . which was nonsense; for Clif Merrick never took her anywhere, and she could have numbered her friends on her fingers.

On these excursions in quest of youth, beauty, sweetness and light, his mother never took Bobby along. He remained at home in the custody of grafting servants and an endless procession of young governesses, none of whom ever stayed longer than a few weeks. The prettier ones were the quickest to go . . . sometimes on an hour's notice. He had put on quite a scene when Miss Newman had left without so much as saying good-bye to him, and had been slapped by his father for the racket he was making.

Shortly after Maxine had been assured that henceforth she would know exactly where Clif was, the big house on Piedmont Square was sold, and Bobby was taken to Europe where his mother rapidly improved in health and spirits. He was placed in a school for rich waifs at Versailles, where he fraternized with youngsters who had become an embarrassing liability to divorced parents. On brief vacations he joined "Maxine"--as he obediently called her--in Paris, scowling his distaste when, in the presence of her new friends, she chattered baby talk to him, to which he made sour replies in a voice that frequently skidded off the treble clef. She had filled her spacious apartment with wigged and bangled old harridans, who swapped dull prattle about their aristocratic relatives for caviare and champagne and was inordinately vain of her ménage, which Bobby impudently insisted would better be called her menagerie.

There were lonely summers at Brighton and Deauville, lonely Christmases at Cannes; private schools and sycophantic tutors; trains and hotels; brief, dry, hard friendships with over-sophisticated, unwanted boys like himself, envious of their mothers' Pekingeses, and not infrequently dizzy with pilferings from the decanter on the sideboard.

At seventeen, he had been sent back, alone, to enter a high-toned prep school in Connecticut where, for previous lack of a balanced intellectual ration and experience of steady discipline, he survived only until Thanksgiving. Headmaster Bowers saw him off on the train and returned to lead the chapel exercises. Ineffable calm sat on his brow, and his voice was vibrant with unfeigned gratitude as he announced, "We will stand and sing the Doxology."

Through the influence of old Nicholas, Bobby was then accepted, provisionally, in another preparatory school, a Military Academy not quite so close to salt water. . . . "It's just a ritzy reform school," he wrote on his first day, to his perplexed grandparent, who replied, in substance, that, if that were so, it was quite the place for him. To his instructors there, he gave more bother than any other six, but contrived to stay on. Through these days, he renewed his abandoned taste for boxing, under a preceptor who cuffed him about, shamefully, until he discovered that the boy was game and thereafter took an interest in him. It was Mr. Bowman's boast, when Bobby finished with them, that albeit he was a bit frail in algebra, he could lick his weight in wildcats.

* * * * *

It was at the State University, however, that Bobby had struck his stride. Neither a loafer nor a dunce, he easily ran circles around the average student in such classes as stirred his curiosity. Zoology? . . . He ate it up! Physiology . . . psychology . . . chemistry . . . he was constantly amazing his friends by his ardent boning, especially in chemistry, in the face of his utter indifference to scholastic credit in the courses he disliked.

His David-and-Jonathan friendship with Tom Masterson had been good for him; better for him than for Tom, a likeable youngster with an insatiable ambition to be a short-story writer.

They had found each other as rushees at a luncheon for freshmen in the Delta Omega house, and decided on the spot to room together. Young Masterson, however eager to emancipate himself from the restraints of a rather severely disciplined household, was something of an idealist, and opened up a new world to Bobby who, listening at first because he liked Tom, and later because he liked what Tom said, learned from his youthful tutor a love for the classics which, in the original, he had despised.

But Masterson, not having been brought up on cocktails, was not much advantaged by the tardy instruction he received in exchange for his Greek and Roman mythology. Once he started--no matter what the hour, place, or circumstance--Tom could be depended upon to continue drinking until he was unconscious. Bobby, approximately sober, would get him home, somehow, and put him to bed with all the solicitude of a mother. Apparently it never occurred to him that he was jeopardizing his chum's future.

"Poor old Tommy!" he would say, unlacing his shoes. "I'm afraid you'll just never learn to drink like a gentleman!"

Nor was the Merrick influence much of a blessing upon the Delta Omega house into which he and Tom moved as sophomores. Had he been less lovable, he might have been less dangerous. His charming irresistibility was fatal to the good resolutions of many a chap who honestly wanted to stay sober and do his work. Even the seniors--by custom disdainful of juvenile society--once they were in debt to him for lavish hospitality which was at first reluctantly accepted, found themselves careening over the road in Bobby's big touring-car, late Friday afternoons, en route to his grandfather's home on Lake Saginack.

And the indulgent old man, believing they would all have a better time if they had the house to themselves--and eager to be out of the racket--would be driven in to the city to find sanctuary at the Columbia Club. The neighbourhood used to protest, but old Nicholas always reminded them--when they complained of drunken demons, for whose conduct he was presumably responsible, driving recklessly with open mufflers and raucous sirens, at all hours of the night--that boys would be boys. When they smashed something, he paid for it.

Not infrequently Bobby's week-end guests went back to Ann Arbor on Monday morning without a nickel; wearing their very socks by permission of their host, who owned them after an all-day poker game on Sunday. How often they promised themselves, "Never again!" but it was hard to stand out against Bobby's insidious smile. Moreover, the food and service at old Nicholas' country palace was a tempting diversion from the near-starvation of fraternity fare and the discomforts of a crowded house where nothing ever received anxious thought and respect but the impending payments on the mortgage.

* * * * *

For some time, Bobby had been conscious of a dull rumble of conversation, just beyond the screen. It began to annoy him. Some stupid ass was airing his home-brewed philosophy.

"All this here talk about Providence . . . Providence; bah--I say! . . . Take this very case, for instance! . . . Here is a noted man who has made himself so useful that people came to him for thousands of miles for help that nobody could give them but him! . . . Look at me, for instance! . . ."

Bobby scowled, and muttered, "Yeah! . . . Look at you! . . . It's bad enough to have to listen to you!"

"Look at me! I came here clear from Ioway; and lucky enough I got here when I did. . . . Last operation he ever performed, they tell me! . . . And they might have saved his life too if that pulmotor thing, or whatever it was, hadn't been in use on that drunken young What's-his-name with the rich granddaddy! What right had he to be alive, anyhow . . . now I ask you?"

It may have been Bobby's sudden pallor that attracted the attention of the nurse who sat at the little desk by the door. She quickly crossed the room and asked if there was anything he wanted. Bobby swallowed with a dry throat, attempted a grateful smile, and replied weakly, "Perhaps I should go back . . . feel better in bed . . . not very strong yet. Tell them, will you?"

His exit from the solarium was effected with such promptness that the patients observed it. Who was this youngster? Questions were asked and answered. The man who had discoursed of the unseemly ways of Providence was deeply contrite. . . . Wished he'd known, he said.

Bobby's nurse stepped out into the corridor, after putting him to bed, and an interne passing by remarked, "So he knows all about it."

"Well, he had to find out sometime, didn't he?"

"Yes--but he's a pretty good scout. . . . And it was a rotten way to dish it up to him!"

"You should worry," snapped Miss Bates.

* * * * *

For hours, Bobby Merrick lay with his eyes closed, motionless, but not asleep. At first, he was hotly indignant. What right had these saps from Ioway, or wherever, to pass judgment on what kind of people had a right to live? How could anybody be so small-minded as to hold it against him that his life had been saved, even if it could be shown that Doctor Hudson might have been rescued if the oxygen machine had been available? It wasn't his fault. He hadn't borrowed the damned thing! He hadn't asked to have his life saved at that price, or at all!

And then his resentment over this monstrous injustice gave way to steady thinking. Perhaps, after all, he was under a certain obligation to this dead man. Very good; he would show his appreciation of what it had cost to save his life. He fell to wondering whether Doctor Hudson had left his young wife and Joyce properly provided for. Joyce was extravagant. He knew what it must require to keep her going. He had had her in tow, occasionally, himself.

"See if Mrs. Ashford is free to come here for a moment," commanded Bobby. The nurse nodded stiffly, left the room, and, in a few minutes, Mrs. Ashford stood by the bedside.

Assuming what he believed to be a mature, conventional, business tone--the tone of large capital about to indulge itself in a brief seizure of magnanimity--he inquired, without preamble, "What sort of an estate did Doctor Hudson leave?"

"I do not know," she replied; and after a pause added crisply, "Why?"

The dry crackle of that "why?" irritated him. She had given him reason to believe that she was sympathetic. Surely she might know he was not asking this question out of sheer curiosity.

"You seem to infer that it is none of my business," he retorted.

Nancy Ashford coloured slightly.

"Well," she snapped, "is it?"

Bobby's face felt hot. He was at a serious disadvantage, and she was not helping him; not making the slightest attempt to understand him.

"You might at least credit me with an honest wish to do something about all this, if I can," he expostulated angrily.

"I am sorry if I offended you,"--with forced composure--"You were thinking of giving some money to the family?"

"If they need it--yes."

"Whose money?"

Bobby raised up on one elbow and scowled.

"Whose money? Why, my own, of course!"

"Some you earned, maybe?"

For a moment, he was speechless with exasperation over the studied insolence of her query. Sinking back upon the pillow, he motioned to her to leave him. Instead, she took her stand at the foot of his bed, and, hands on hips, militantly began an address distinguished for its lack of polite ambiguity.

"You invited this," she said thickly. "You called me in here to get some information about the Hudsons, and I'm going to tell you! And then you can pay them off . . . with your grandfather's money! Do you know what killed Doctor Hudson? . . . Worry! They said it was overwork that weakened his heart. I know better! The only thing that counted in his life, besides his profession, was Joyce. He saw her going to the dogs. Part of that was your fault! You've had a reputation for ruining all your friends!"

Bobby Merrick lay stunned under the attack, his eyes wide with amazement at the woman's audacity.

"The poor chap tried to pull himself together." Her voice wavered a little, but she went on with resolution. "Built that little house at the lake, went swimming when he wasn't able; knew he wasn't able; had provided a lung-motor for emergencies; and then, at the moment when he has to have it--you're using it! You--of all people! And now you casually suggest settling the bill with money!"

Something in his look--it was the look of a hurt animal--checked Nancy's passionate diatribe.

"Please forgive me," she muttered agitatedly. "But, as I say, you invited it. You wanted to know, I have told you."

Bobby swallowed awkwardly, and rubbed his brow with the rough sleeve of his cotton smock.

"Well," he muttered hoarsely, "you've told me. If you've said everything you have to say, I won't keep you."

She started toward the door, paused, turned about, walked slowly to the window and stood looking out, her left elbow cupped in her right hand, the slim fingers of the other tapping her shoulder, agitatedly, at first; then meditatively. Bobby watched the slowing tempo of her fingers, cleared his throat nervously, and decided to meet her half way.

"That was really all I had to offer; wasn't it? . . . just money?"

She returned slowly to the bedside, drew up a chair, sat down, and rested her plump arms upon the white counterpane close to his pillow.

"You have something very valuable besides money; but you'll never use it." Her tone was judicial, prophetic. "It's in you, all right, but it will never come out. Nobody will ever know that you had it. The money will always be blocking the way. . . . You were much disturbed to-day, because you overheard an impolite insinuation that your life wasn't worth saving at the price of Doctor Hudson's. Naturally, you resented that. Your indignation does you credit. . . . However--crude as that man was, what he said was true, wasn't it? . . . You admitted it was true when you decided to put up a cash difference. But you can't justify yourself that way. It might make things more comfortable for the Hudson family; but it wouldn't help you to live with yourself again."

She had taken his hand in hers, maternally. Disengaging his eyes, she stared upward absorbedly, and murmured, as if quite alone, "He'd never do it, of course. . . . Couldn't! . . . Wouldn't! . . . Too much money. . . . It would be too hard . . . take too long . . . but God! . . . What a chance!"

Bobby stirred uneasily.

"I'm afraid I don't get you . . . if--if you're talking about me."

"Oh, yes, you do!" She nodded her head, slowly, emphatically. "You know what I mean . . . and you wish you were up to it . . . but--" pulling herself together resolutely, "you're not; so we won't talk about it any more. . . . Is there something I can get for you before I go?"

Bobby raised a detaining hand, and their fingers interlaced.

"I think I know now what you're hinting. But it's quite impossible, as you say. It's worse than impossible. It's ridiculous! Doctor Hudson was famous! Nobody can ever replace him! . . . Oh, I say, Mrs. Ashford; that's quite too bad! I didn't mean to say the wrong thing, you know!"

For Nancy's eyes had suddenly tightened as if wincing under sharp pain, and her white head bent lower and lower in a dejection strangely out of keeping with her aggressive personality. He ventured to touch her hair in a clumsy, boyish caress, murmuring again that he was sorry.

"That's all right, boy," she said thickly, regarding him with weary eyes, suddenly grown old. "You needn't worry about me! . . . I'll carry on! . . . My little problem is quite simple compared to yours."

She straightened up, patted his hand, and smiled.

Bobby raised on one elbow.

"You're a good sport, Mrs. Ashford!"

"Thanks! . . . You like people to be good sports; don't you? . . . So do I. I'd rather be a good sport than worth millions! . . . I expect you're a pretty good sport too; aren't you, Bobby?"

He relaxed on his pillow and studied the ceiling.

"Your--what you were talking about--would be a sort of sporting proposition; wouldn't it?"

"Quite!"

"Years and years!"

"For life! . . . There would be no discharge in that war!" She extended her hand, as one man to another.

"I'm going now. . . . Sure you're not angry with me any more?"

He shook his head, with tightly closed eyes, and gripped her hand. The emotional tension of the past half hour was taking advantage of his physical weakness. Hot tears seeped through his lashes, and trickled down his temples.

Nancy withdrew her hand, stood for a moment silently regarding him, her knuckles pressed hard against her lips; then turned away and quietly closed the door behind her.

"You say he's different," pursued Joyce interestedly. "How do you mean--different? Sober, perhaps?"

Masterson chuckled.

"Don't be a fool!" she growled. "You know very well what I meant."

He returned his empty glass to the silver tray on the table, settled himself comfortably into the cushions of the garden swing, and so frankly considered the slender shapeliness of the girl in the wicker chair that she shifted her position uneasily.

"Yes," he replied, reverting tardily to her question, "he's all of sober, and then some. He's owlish . . . morose . . . prowls the night like Hamlet . . . has an idea that people resent his having been saved from drowning."

"How absurd! Did he tell you that?"

"As much as."

She thumbed the pages of the novel that lay in her lap and frowned.

"Well--and what is he proposing to do about it? . . . Sulk?"

Young Masterson indicated by a slow shake of the head, eyes half closed, that the problem was too vast for him, and meditatively tapped the end of a fresh cigarette on the arm of the swing.

"You'll discover for yourself that Bobby is greatly altered since his accident. I can't quite make him out. Yesterday, when I saw him at Windymere, I expected to find him in better spirits. He is almost well now; has been walking about on the grounds for days. But he seems thoroughly preoccupied. I suggested it might improve his disposition if we threw together a little cocktail, and he said, 'You know where the makings are: help yourself.' I shook up enough for both of us, but he wouldn't join me; and when I ragged him about it, he replied, from about ten miles off, that he'd 'another plan in mind.'

"'Something that doesn't include gin, evidently,' I suggested; and he nodded cryptically.

"'Something like that,' he replied. You know about how little he discloses through that poker face of his, when he decides to be incomunicado."

"So--you dared him to tell you, I suppose."

"No; I just kidded him a little, but he didn't take it very nicely. Just sat--and posed for 'The Thinker.' 'What's the big idea?' I said. 'Gone over to Andy Volstead?'"

"What did he say?" demanded Joyce, as the pause lengthened.

"He said, 'Hell, no!' and then mumbled, down in his throat, that he'd gone over to Nancy Ashford."

"And who's Nancy Ashford?" she inquired, sharply, flushing with annoyance over her disclosure.

"You ought to know," smugly enjoying her vexation. "She is the superintendent of Brightwood Hospital."

"Oh--you mean Mrs. Ashford. I hadn't thought of her as Nancy. They must have become quite well acquainted. Why, she's an old lady."

"Well--so much the better; wouldn't you say?"

She met his banter with a grimace.

"You spend too much of your time thinking up story plots, Tommy. It's affecting your mind."

"Maybe so," agreed Masterson dryly. He stretched his long arms over the back of the swing and regarded her with an inquisitive smile. "Your own story grows more exciting every minute. What else do you want to know about Bobby?"

Joyce offered him the concession of a crooked smile.

"Did he say whether he was coming in soon?"

"Nary a word on that. However, he may not feel himself quite up to it yet. . . . Rather awkward situation, you'll admit."

She nodded, and there was a moment's silence.

"You have Bobby and me all wrong, Tom. We were together pretty steadily . . . in December . . . before Helen came. . . ."

Masterson broke in with an unpleasant chuckle.

"I'm surprised that you remember anything about December," he teased. "My own recollection of it is very pale."

"Yes; I'll admit it was rather dreadful. Especially the evening we celebrated your birthday. That must have been a mighty rough night on the sea. Incidentally, I have not seen Bobby since. When he finished at the university in February, he sailed for France to visit his mother, without a line to me that he was going. I had two short letters from him later. Then he turns up at home; next day this dreadful thing happens to us."

She hesitated before going on.

"So--now you know exactly how thick we are. Does it sound--romantic like?"

"Of course, you're bound to keep it in mind," observed Masterson soberly, "that Bobby feels quite terribly about the--the thing that occurred out there at the lake. Never having met Helen, he is a bit shy about meeting her now. He may fear she would be slightly prejudiced against him, under the circumstances."

"I'm afraid she is," agreed Joyce reluctantly. "Entirely natural that she would be."

"How is Helen, by the way?"

"Oh, she's steady--the darling! Want to see her? I'll tell her you're here."

She rose, handing Masterson her book.

"Helen has been entertaining a queer little lady for the past hour or more, but I think she is free now. The caller was one of father's patients, I presume. So many people have been here lately . . . all sorts . . . people we had never heard of who come with tearful gratitude to tell us what father had been to them. Really, it has kept us quite stirred up. I wish they wouldn't. . . . And letters? . . . To-day there was a long one from a man in Maine hinting that father had saved his life, somehow, years ago. He didn't state the particulars. . . . Seemed rather secretive, as if there were some big mystery behind it; as if there were something he wanted to tell, but couldn't. Very queer. . . . I'll go and call Helen."

* * * * *

She turned toward the big white house with the green shutters, and Masterson's eyes appraisingly followed her graceful movements as she crossed the lawn. . . . Some girl! . . . He set the swing gently in motion and inhaled deeply from his cigarette. . . . A thoroughbred! So, she was Bobby's, then? What the devil did Bobby mean--trying to keep this a secret from him? Well, if she considered herself Bobby's property--and obviously she did--Bobby's pal must be loyal. However, a man could look at her, couldn't he? . . . And wish she belonged to him? . . . A compliment, in a way . . . perhaps . . . debatable question, probably. . . . But seriously, why shouldn't an artist in creative writing have as much licence to admire beauty for its own lovely sake as a painter--no matter whose girl she thought she was? What a type! Not many blondes like that left in this dyed and painted world. . . . Original colours, these. . . . Pale gold and milk white; with the slinky-footed gait of some wild woods thing. . . . Some girl! But what made her think Bobby was interested in her? Or--was he? If so, he had kept his sentiments carefully concealed. . . .

Joyce's reappearance through the shrubbery, accompanied by her step-mother, interrupted Masterson's day-dreaming. The two offered a striking contrast. Mrs. Hudson was Latin in every feature and curve, in the glossy blackness of her shingled hair, the arch of her brows, the utter lack of self-consciousness in her posture and carriage. Joyce was perfect Saxon; slightly the taller. Leading the way, she seemed the older.

He strolled to meet them. Helen waved her hand, upon sight of him. She had adopted the rôle of being years his senior, much to his amusement. They had often made a little game of it--he, cast for the part of a spoiled nine-year-old, which he carried off with amazing skill; she, the exasperated but polite mother, endeavouring to keep her whelp in hand without making too much of a scene. They had done it, quite spontaneously, at the Byrnes, one evening. Laura Byrne, upon her own testimony, "had about passed out," Senator Byrne had said the skit was worth a fortune in vaudeville "big time". They had thought it not half bad, themselves.

The conventional uniform of the bereft had only accentuated her youth. It called attention to her girlish vitality, deepened her dimples, whitened her throat; as a severe frame on a bright etching will heighten its colours; emphasize its values.

She extended a small hand and smiled. Her recent experience had left traces. She was pale and a bit remote, her appearance suggesting convalescence from a serious illness.

The smile fluttered momentarily and was gone; but it was essentially the same smile that one waited for, plotted for, tried to recapture in memory, analyzed without success. Once Masterson had attempted to persuade one of his women in a story to smile like that; but she couldn't learn it. He had written, of "Gloria"--

"It was more than a smile. It was a little sonata, in three movements. It arrived first in her eyes, which gradually grew wider and bluer. Almost imperceptibly, but very disturbingly, the patrician brows lifted, ever so little, as if they asked permission. That was the adagio movement.

"Then, suddenly, the sonata played upon her lips, as when an organist seeks with one hand a lower bank of keys for the melody. They parted to disclose the smallest, straightest, whitest of teeth. That was the scherzo movement.

"Instantly, however, as if the lips had become alarmed at their own audacity, they closed, demurely. But the smile lingered in her eyes--in the outer corners of her eyes--long after her pretty mouth had done with it; and that was the largo movement. Largo dolcemente.

"And the beholder? What of him? Ah--but his pulse ran on into throbbing, pounding strotto!"

Masterson knew the description was silly. He had added, rather helplessly:

"--a vastly disquieting smile; a smile to be smiled with discretion, preferably among strong-minded, elderly men--relatives, if at all convenient to have relatives at hand."

Helen Hudson smiled. To-day it was a sonatina. The movements were adagio, andante, lento; but it was no less stirring for its chastened mood.

* * * * *

"It seems a long time since we saw you, Tom," she said, in her husky contralto, motioning him to a place beside her in the swing.

Joyce had remained standing.

"Tommy," said she, "I had promised Ned Brownlow I would go for a ride with him. He's out front now, waiting for me. . . . Mind if I go?"

"Depart in Peace!" Masterson held up two fingers, pontifically. "I am in excellent hands."

Joyce's slim fingers trailed caressingly across her stepmother's shoulders as she moved away. "I'll not be long, dear," she said.

"Have you been getting out, at all?" inquired Masterson, with comradely solicitude.

Helen shook her head.

"Too busy! Callers come here at all hours; people one can't very well refuse to see; patients of Doctor Hudson's and others he appears to have befriended in one way or another. I presume you recall the quite unusual number of floral remembrances. . . ."

"I never saw so many!"

"Well, Tom, those flowers came at the direction of people from many places; from persons whose relation to us was very difficult to establish. Fully a score were unidentifiable by anyone at Brightwood. And these callers I am receiving daily are mostly unknown to us. They come to inquire if there is anything they can do for Joyce and me. Yesterday a queer old Italian turned up and tried to present me with a thousand dollars. That's just a sample. Their stories are quite different, what there is of them--for they are strangely reticent--but one fact is common to all . . . sometime, somewhere, Doctor Hudson had helped them meet a crisis--usually involving money loaned; though not always money; sometimes just advice, and the aid of his influence."

"He surely had a big heart!" said Masterson.

"Yes, certainly; but there's more to it than that. Lots of men have big hearts, and are generous with their money. This is a different matter. His dealings with these people were something other. They all act as if they belonged with him to some eccentric secret society. They come here eager to do something, anything, for me, because they want to express their gratitude; but when you pin them down and invite them to tell you by what process they got into our family's debt, they stammer and dodge. It's very strange.

"Since two o'clock, I've been listening to a story that perplexes me more than any of the others; probably because I prodded a little deeper into the mystery. An old lady I didn't know existed came to tell me what a wonderful man Doctor Hudson was, and could she be of any aid to me? . . . I'd like to talk it over with someone. Would it bore you?"

"Tell me--please!"

"Well--it all began, said Mrs. Wickes, with an operation on her husband. Doctor Hudson had warned them it was hopeless. The family was left destitute. She says there was no bill sent from the hospital; that Doctor Hudson found a good position for the older boy and sent the girl, who had some talent for drawing, to an art school. . . . She pointed to that lovely marine over the mantel in our living-room, and said, 'That's hers. She gave it to him. It was exhibited by the Architectural League in New York.' . . . Doctor Hudson had stood between them and disaster, she said, until they were able to look out for themselves; and when, a couple years later, she went to his office with a small payment on the debt they owed him, he refused to accept it; said, at first, that he had had enough joy out of it, and didn't want to be repaid any farther. She quite insisted; and he said, 'Did you ever tell anybody about our little transaction?' 'No,' she replied. 'You told me not to--and I didn't.' 'Then,' he declared stoutly, 'I can't take it back!'

"Of course, she was dissatisfied to leave it that way--she has all the instincts of a lady--but when she pressed him to take the money he explained, 'Had I considered this a loan, I could accept its repayment. I did not so regard it, when I invested it in your family. You have all been much more successful and prosperous than I thought you were going to be. So--since I believed I was giving it to you outright, I can't take it back now because, in the meantime, I have used it all up, myself!"

"Pardon me," said Masterson, "I don't believe I quite understand. What was that last thing he said to her?"

Helen nodded, mysteriously, and repeated the inexplicable phrase.

"You may well inquire," she went on. "I asked Mrs. Wickes what that meant, and she grew restless. 'I can't say that I rightly know,' she stammered.

"'But you have a suspicion!' I said.

"At that she hurriedly changed the subject by taking a bulky purse from her handbag. She pressed me to take the money. It had been invested, she said, and now she wished to restore it to us.

"I said to her, 'If Doctor Hudson refused to accept it, so shall I. You had best reinvest it. Put it back where it was, if it yielded a good rate.'

"'Oh, I can't do that,' she replied. 'They're quite done with it, you know.'

"Well, after that, I gave it up! She was over my head!"

"Perhaps she's a bit cracked," hazarded Masterson.

Helen was thoughtful.

"Yes; she would be cracked, and we could let it go at that, and smile over it, if she was the only one of her species."

"You mean that you've entertained some more like her?"

She nodded.

"Yesterday, a quite well-known merchant called on me. You would recognize his name. His affair with Doctor Hudson dated ten years back. He wanted to pay me a pretty large sum of money which he said was interest on a loan. I thought it odd that he was coming forward with it after so long a time, and he confessed that Doctor Hudson had refused it. So did I, of course.

"My curiosity had the better of me, and I pressed him to tell me about it. He said that about ten years ago he was on the rim of failure. He had started in business for himself; had over-reached; and, as if he was not having enough anxiety, his wife passed through a lengthy and expensive illness. He had built a beautiful home. It was more than half paid for. He decided to let it go at a cruel sacrifice to get cash to put into his tottering business. He listed the house with a real estate concern. It was worth thirty-five thousand dollars. He was offering it for twenty thousand. There was a temporary depression of real estate values. Well--next day, he said, Doctor Hudson came to see him.

"'I understand you're selling your home for twenty thousand dollars. Why are you doing that? It's worth twice that much.'

"The young merchant explained that he must have money immediately, or his business would fail.

"'I'll lend you twenty thousand,' said Doctor Hudson. 'I haven't it, but I can get it. Pay me the principal of this loan when you are prospering again. I shall not expect any interest, because I have use for it, myself; and you are not to tell anyone, while I live, that we have transacted this business.'"

"What an odd deal," commented Masterson.

"Wait until you hear the rest of it," said Helen quietly. "Within three years, my caller said, he had returned the money, and was insistent upon paying interest on the loan. Doctor Hudson refused to take it. And what do you think he said when he declined to accept the money?"

"Give up!"

"He said, 'I can't take it, you see; for I've used it all up myself! 'Now--that's five distinct times I've heard that phrase, in the past week! What do you make of it?"

"Queer!" said Masterson. "Couldn't have had something to do with his income tax, could it? You know . . . so much allowed for gifts, charity, and the like."

"Tommy, don't be foolish!"

"Well--have you a theory?"

"Not the faintest glimmer of one." Then, animatedly, "Did you ever hear the story of Doctor Hudson's early life?"

"No; does it offer a clue to these queer performances of his?"

"Not at all . . . at least, it offers no clue to me. Perhaps . . . to a psychologist, which I am not. . . . But, I think I'd like to tell you. . . . It's no secret.

"You see, Wayne's parents were very poor. They lived on a farm upstate somewhere. He had to look out for himself, early. As a boy he had wanted to be a surgeon. He came to Detroit, at fifteen, to enter high school, and worked in the home of a Doctor Cummings . . ."

"And married his daughter! I knew that much."

"You're going too fast. . . . In the Cummings home, Wayne Hudson was errand boy, hostler, accountant, and, on occasion, nurse, cook, private secretary, and rescue squad."

"Rescue? How's that?"

Helen hesitated.

"This Doctor Cummings was a very capable man, with a large practice; but unfortunately he drank too much . . . periodically. At intervals of anywhere from three weeks to two months, he would disappear for days. It was Wayne's duty to track him down, clean him up, bring him home, and meantime invent excuses for his absence and serve as a shock-absorber between the doctor and all his interests--the hospitals, the patients, the family."

"Not a very pleasant occupation for a high school boy."

"No," agreed Helen, "but calculated to mature him early. And it was not by any means a thankless task. Doctor Cummings was of course deeply appreciative and in his repentant moments assured him of his lasting gratitude. He sent Wayne to college later, and guaranteed his medical training with a life insurance policy, which, strangely enough, became accessible exactly when he had most need of it, for Doctor Cummings died when Wayne was a senior in college."

"Perhaps that helps to explain Doctor Hudson's marriage while he was still a medic," commented Masterson. "Doubtless the girl was fond of him. He felt under heavy obligations to the family. That . . . and the propinquity . . . so he married her."

"Not quite that," corrected Helen. "He was very fond of her; had given up everything to be in Arizona with her until she died. For more than four years, she was his chief concern. Naturally, he couldn't give proper attention to his work. He told me he had days of depression, while in the medical school, fearing he had mistaken his vocation, after all. His studies were hard, and he had much difficulty keeping up with them."

"One would hardly think that Doctor Hudson had ever found his studies difficult."

"He continued to find them so, for fully a year after his wife's death. Then, something happened! No; I do not know what it was. He did not tell me, and I did not insist; but something happened! One day he became conscious of a new attitude towards his books, his profession. He worked whole nights in the hospital laboratory, without fatigue. Then, soon after, through an odd circumstance, he was obliged to do a difficult operation at three o'clock one morning on an emergency case--a head injury. It attracted much attention. From then on he specialized in brain surgery. You know how well he succeeded."

Masterson closed one eye, and considered her thoughtfully.

"I can see," he said, measuring his words, "that it's somehow in the back of your head that this rather remarkable change in him . . . this quite sudden step-up from depression . . . sense of failure . . . halfway notion to quit medicine and sell bonds or something . . . into prompt recognition and success . . . I think you suspect that it's all tied around this--this funny business of his charities? Am I right?"

She nodded.

"Mostly however because here are two mysteries about him. I suppose I have tried to relate them . . . unconsciously, perhaps. They may have no association, at all. . . . Maybe he would have told me all about it, had he lived. . . . But--we've talked enough about mysteries, Tommy. Let's go and look at the asters."

Masterson followed her through the garden, admiring her childish enthusiasm over the autumn flowers. It was as if she caressed them. He knew she expected him to go now, and toyed with his keys.

"Don't stay in too closely," he admonished. "These people will wear you out."

"I'm taking a few days off . . . going up into the country to-morrow, to see Martha, our caretaker's sister. She's not very well . . . dreadfully broken up, you know; and I haven't seen her since it all happened."

"Might I drive you up? I should like to!"

"Thanks; but I shall want my car while I am there."

"We might tow it!"

"Oh--do you really want to go up there so badly as that? I'll tell you what you may do; drive Joyce up to Flintridge, Sunday afternoon. Probably I'll be lonesome by that time."

They strolled together to the gate.

"How fine it is that you and Joyce still have each other!"

"Yes; isn't it?"

He stepped into his car, waved a hand, and disappeared around the corner. Slowly Helen retraced her steps to the garden, sauntered along the narrow path, stooped to cup her pink palms around a garish dahlia. How fine it was that she and Joyce still had each other. . . . Or had they?

As old Nicholas arose from the table that Saturday night, he said, no more to his tall grandson than to himself, "I am glad I could live until now!"

The past eight years had been dreadfully unhappy for him. It was not that there had been fresh reasons for unhappiness, but leisure to realize how much of life's solider satisfactions he had missed.

From his 'teens until his retirement from the business he had organized, Merrick's consuming passion had been concerned with the development of a great industry; an enterprise singularly difficult in that it lacked the natural guidance of established precedents. There were rules to be made for it, but none to be followed. It was a business without an ancestry.

Men who dealt with any product in the field of ceramics had thousands of years of good tradition back of them. Weavers, tanners, jewellers, masons; builders of houses, ships, cathedrals; growers of grain, fruit, cattle--these people could plot their economic curve and determine future policies by past experience. It was not so of motors.

The rise of that industry had been meteoric, dramatic! A prosperous young bicycle factory turned its attention to the experimental manufacture of a horseless carriage, as a tentative sideline. Young Merrick's stockholders were frankly sceptical of the venture in the face of public hilarity over the noisy, undependable, cumbersome, dangerous gasoline buggy.

And then--one day--the power-driven vehicle was suddenly an accepted fact. But the distance between the fox-statured eohippus and the draft horse was no wider than that of the evil-smelling little rattle-trap of an automobile, when Nicholas Merrick first made its acquaintance, and the strong, swift, silent, streamline motor-car which eventually developed.

Its evolution involved hazards as foolhardy as investments at Monte Carlo. A bewildering succession of revolutionizing inventions made the business over, again and again, while investors wrung their hands and shrieked discordant counsel into the ears of apprehensive directors. Costly machinery, installed yesterday, would be scrapped to-day to be replaced by costlier to-morrow. Those were days when the man who bore the final responsibility for such a chaotic enterprise found that twenty-four hours' devotion to business was demanded by this unprecedented industry, plunging impetuously over an uncharted course, narrowly skirting ruin every few weeks, and turning sharp corners every day.

Responsive to general clamour, prophetic of great fortunes to be made, innumerable companies hastily entered the motor-mart where competition became merciless, unscrupulous. Disaster was inevitable for all but a few of the keenest, the bravest, the luckiest. Merrick experienced all the anxiety of a pioneer leading a long wagon-train of scared emigrants across a trackless desert without a compass. For fully thirty years, but little of his time or thought had been deflected from his exacting responsibility.

When, therefore, at seventy-two, he wearily dismounted from the tiger he had ridden--an event which called for a brilliant complimentary banquet at the Chamber of Commerce in the suburban town of Axion--he was a very tired old man with a fortune estimated at twenty millions, a high blood pressure, and a large stock of disquieting memories.

Clif. . . . God!--what a tragedy! . . . Clif's mother--a timid, brown thrush of a woman--had died when the boy was twelve. Nicholas had scarcely missed her. They had built the big shops, that year. He saw little of the boy. Occasionally there would be a brief and stormy session--Nicholas violently hortatory, Clifford calmly insolent--but nothing ever came of it beyond estrangement.

Nobody could say he had not done his utmost to surround his son with opportunities. Surely if money could have done it, Clif had a chance. Nicholas had always silenced his own misgivings with that reply.

"God knows I've spent enough on him! . . . I can't nurse him, myself!"

But now that enforced idleness had brought opportunity for serious reflection, Nicholas milled it all over, elbows on knees, empty hands dangling. The old alibi was no good. Nor was there any reasonable expectation of better things to be expressed by the new generation. Bobby was a lovable youngster, to be sure. Nicholas rejoiced in his steady wit, his winning smile, his unfailing consideration of his grandfather's moods, but he gave no promise of success. Beyond the fact that he played the piano like a professional artist, possessed an unusual capacity for making and retaining friendships, and had contrived to finish his college course, Bobby held out no encouragement that he would ever do anything worth a thought. He would drive and drink, gamble and golf, hunt and fish, marry some dizzy, dissipated, scarlet-lipped little flapper and tire of her; he would summer in Canada, winter in Cannes, clip his coupons, confer with his tailor, subsidize the symphony orchestra, appear on the stationery of a few charities and on the platform when the Republican candidate for President came to town; and, ultimately, be pushed into a crypt in the big, echoing, gothic mausoleum alongside Clifford, the waster.

Oh, there had been an occasional ray of hope; a mere phosphorescence; just enough to make the darkness a little more dense when the flash was over.

On the last day of his grandson's senior year . . . it was a mid-year class, with ceremonies deferred until commencement . . . Nicholas had driven over to the little city of the State University, lunching with his old-time friend the head of the Department of Chemistry. He had straightened and beamed when Professor Garland said, "I don't know whether you're aware of it, Merrick, but that wild young cub of yours has the making of a chemist."

"Honest? Speak to him about it; won't you, Garland? It would mean more--coming from you!"

Garland had made a lengthy rite of mixing his tea and hot water before replying, "Chemistry's hard work, old chap! Your boy knows he doesn't have to work!"

And when Nicholas' face fell, Garland added, consolingly, "You can't blame him. Why should he put on a rubber apron and puddle in nasty stews and noxious stinks when he can get some joy out of life."

* * * * *

To-night a great weight had been lifted from old Nicholas. He had not been prepared for the news of his good fortune, and though his spirit sang, his sagging shoulders testified to the gravity of the load he had now thrown off. He laid a brown, parchment-coloured hand affectionately on Bobby's arm, and together they sauntered from the dining-room into the spacious library. This was the old man's sanctuary. The walls were covered, literally from walnut-beamed ceiling to Chinese rug, with cases filled with unexcelled and unexplored classic literature. The mental pabulum on which Nicholas fed, these days, consisted for the most part of mystery stories strangely alike in plot and technique. It was not that Nicholas had no mind for better reading. It was only that he was tired of thinking.

They strolled into the library, and the weary old fellow sank with a sigh into the depths of his favourite chair. A gaudy-jacketed detective story lay, face downward, on the table. Bobby took it up, read its title aloud, and grinned.

"Light, Grandpère?"

He offered a flame at the tip of the old man's cigar.

"Exciting yarn?"

Nicholas puffed energetically for a moment, like a leaky bellows, and replied, "The inspector is just questioning the cook, Bobby, and she says she knows the shot was fired at exactly eleven-ten, because that is the time she always puts out the cat."

"You should be pretty well acquainted with the kitchen habits of that cook, by this time, Grandpère. It's the same one, isn't it, in all these stories?"

"By no means, sir," protested Nicholas. "The last cook was a man!"

Bobby was restless to be by himself and eager to divert his grandfather to his novel so that he might escape. The emotional strain of the past hour had been decidedly wearing. The confidence he had extended to the old man represented many days of serious thought; and nights too when he had paced his room for hours considering his tentative decision from every possible angle of objection. Now that he had resolved upon his course, it was only fair that he should inform his grandfather. He had done so. He had made a conscious effort to avoid a dramatic moment. He hated scenes; he had been brought up on them. But old Nicholas had passed through quite too much despair and anxiety not to be raised to an exalted mood by the young fellow's calm announcement of a programme committing him to a task at once expensively sacrificial and, as to duration, interminable.

For a moment, after Bobby had flung out the words, the old man had sat stupified and incredulous. He had put down his fork. His jaw sagged and his chin chopped up and down as in a shaking palsy. The deep wrinkles about his mouth had joined the wrinkles about his eyes, in a series of half-circles, as he peered across the table. He dug his gnarled old fingers into the snowy cloth, rested his weight on his elbows and demanded, in a rasping treble, "How's that, Robert? I don't believe I caught what you just said! Say that again!"

Bobby had said it again, slowly, calmly, convincingly. Old Nicholas' seamed face twitched, and he rubbed the corners of his cavernous eyes with the back of his mottled hand.

"You are a brave boy!" he said, his voice breaking.

Then, ashamed of his weakness, he violently cleared his throat, straightened his back, and declared with dignity, "I congratulate you, sir! I cannot remember when any member of my tribe has made a decision of greater moment than yours! May God--bless you!" The benediction was spoken with a quaver. . . . It was almost too much for both of them.

For an hour thereafter, Bobby had outlined his future plans with a breadth of scope and clarity of detail certifying to the vast amount of time and thought he had spent on them, the old man following every word with eager nods of his leonine head, and occasional hard bangings of his fist upon the table to emphasize his approval. "Yes, sir," he would shout, tumultuously, "you can do it! You will do it! You have it in you! I always thought you had!" His mood was reminiscent of the good old days when it required a deal of table-pounding to convince the directors that a radical and immediate change of policy was necessary to meet new conditions, no matter what it cost.

Now that the first tidal wave of enthusiasm had broken and surfed, Bobby wanted the subject temporarily dismissed. He had lived with his problem--eaten it, dreamed it, walked the floor with it, gone to the mat with it, cajoled it, cursed it, for a month; and, having now brought it to something like a climax, he was ready to see it tabled.

Sensing his grandson's restlessness as he stood toying with a paper-weight, Nicholas deliberately located his place in the book, meticulously polished his glasses, and smiled a very obvious adieu.

"Think I'll step out for a little stroll, if you are to be reading, Grandpère," said Bobby.

Nicholas nodded several times; puffed noisily, contentedly, buried himself in his story.

Immediately Bobby's back was turned, however, he put down the book and stared after the receding figure, his old eyes wide with a new interest to which he had not yet become accustomed. Bobby looked back, as he passed through the doorway, and grinned. Nicholas caught up his book, frowned heavily over some abstruse passage he had just come upon, and puffed mightily on his long cigar.

* * * * *

Changing his pumps for tennis shoes and his dinner coat for a light sweater, Bobby let himself out through the carriage door, upon the driveway. There was a half moon in an unclouded sky and a few fireflies. He trudged aimlessly on the drive, left it for the grass, wandered along the narrow path by the rose arbor, found himself near the huge twin pillars of the gate, strolled out upon the highway. It was not a busy thoroughfare, but a narrow, gravelled motor-road serving chiefly the widely-spaced country estates fronting on the western shore of the lake. It was very quiet to-night. Hands in pockets, head tilted forward in moody meditation, he strode along indifferent to his random journey, his eyes becoming accommodated to the gloom.

He was glad he had told his grandfather. To-morrow he would drive down to Brightwood and tell Nancy Ashford. It was like having strong anchors to windward that these two people should share his secret. He hoped Nancy Ashford would be content to say, "Very proper! Much as I expected!" and let it go at that. He wasn't much of a success in moments crammed with sentimentality. It was all right in the case of Grandpère, of course. He was an old man, and a bit mellow. But he hoped Nancy would be sensible.

Bobby had walked a mile. A hundred yards ahead of him, at a sharp bend of the road, a pair of glaring headlights tilted at a precarious angle indicated that a car had listed heavily to starboard. . . . In the ditch, he surmised. He heard the sudden churning of the motor, as power was violently applied to impotent wheels. "Green driver," he reflected. Again the roar of the straining motor proclaimed that somebody was making a bad matter no better. "Fool!" he muttered; and quickened his steps.

Evidently the driver had sighted him, and, unsure of his intentions, was making a final effort at extrication before he reached the car; for, as he came within a few feet of it, the engine fairly bellowed with exasperation and the big coupé shuddered. There was a young woman at the wheel.

"My God, sister," shouted Bobby, when the racket had subsided, "don't do that any more!"

Sister accepted the admonition with wide eyes into which Bobby now gazed interestedly at close range. She smiled, and he reconsidered his earlier opinion of her. She was probably unaccustomed to driving in soft gravel; unacquainted with its treacheries; might be a most excellent driver almost anywhere else.

"Is it really down very deep?" she inquired, with anxiety.

There was a curious huskiness in her voice that gave it an intimate, just-between-us, confidential timbre.

Bobby walked to the rear and looked.

"Very!" he declared. "To the hub. Your differential is flat on the ground."

Her face was perplexed. "I don't know what that is," she admitted, "but I'm sure it shouldn't be."

"No," said Bobby paternally, "they do better when they're up off the road."

She sighed, and dabbed at a warm neck with a trifle of lace.

"It's my fault, I suppose," ruefully, "I was driving rather fast; and at that sharp turn a car came whopping toward me with the sort of lights they use on aviation fields. I turned out, slipped off . . ."

"And here you are!" finished Bobby. "Lucky you didn't upset. You might have been badly hurt."

She searched his shadowed face, slightly stirred by the note of concern for her safety . . . might be safer without it. What she saw caused her no anxiety.

"Well, at least we have no broken bones to worry about. All I have to do now is to get this car back on the road. Anything to suggest? I'm awfully helpless about such things. Not meaning," she added quickly, "that I'm in the habit of ditching my car."

"I'm sure you're not," said Bobby encouragingly. "This gravel is very slippery."

"What do you think I'd better do?" she asked, in a tone that quite relinquished all further responsibility into his hands.

It was as if she had leaned her slight weight against him. For the past half hour, he had been thinking himself the loneliest, most utterly detached person on earth. His important resolution had quite cut him off from his habitual round of interests, but had not yet keyed him on to any new ones. Nobody had ever been so desperately in need of friendship.

He rested an elbow on the ledge of the open window and became whimsically didactic.

"In cases like this, when the local power-plant has proved insufficient, it is customary to seek aid. One calls in the neighbours. They, having suspected all along that their services might be required, have gone early to bed, and must be pounded out with loud noises and the offer of a king's ransom. Having bathed, shaved, dressed and breakfasted, they come, growling, with a snorting tractor . . ."

"And when they are all ready to pull, the tow-line breaks, and they must drive the tractor to town for another."

"Something like that," agreed Bobby.

"Your advice seems clear," she said, matching his mood. "First, one goes for the neighbours." She tallied the item on her fingers. "But which one?"

"Which one of the neighbours?" Bobby countered with a chuckle. "Or which one of us? . . . I'll go, of course, gladly. But," he added commandingly, "you're coming along! I won't have you out here alone in a stalled car!"

It was spoken spontaneously. Doubtless it meant nothing more than an unintentionally peremptory way of saying he considered it unsafe for her to be left by herself on this unfrequented road. But the fervent phrasing of it, the implied possessorship he had put into his "I won't have you out here alone" brought her a queer sensation. Nobody had ever used precisely that tone with her