Gerard and Isabel go Driving"WIPE IT OFF," SHE REQUESTED RESIGNEDLY, "WIPE IT OFF AND NEVER TELL"
"WIPE IT OFF," SHE REQUESTED RESIGNEDLY, "WIPE IT OFF AND NEVER TELL"
The operation and the drive that preceded it had occupied considerable time. It was an hour since the party had separated at the yacht club's pier. The brief interval of comparative clearness had given place to dark skies across which the capricious wind herded masses of gray cloud. And presently several drops of rain fell and trickled down the wind-shield of the car.
"Hurry," Isabel urged, sitting up with renewed animation. "It is going to pour."
"The little machine isn't capable of much hurrying on this road," Gerard regretted. "She hasn't any speed, of course. How far have we left to go?"
"A long way, seven or eight miles. We haven't passed the country club, yet."
"But Corrie drove over in an hour!"
"With his big car, yes," she retorted. "Perhaps this was not the best way, after all. But it would take longer to go back, now, than to keep on."
This was obvious. There was nothing to do except force the skidding, panting automobile to maintain its best gait.
They were destined to lose that race. As they came opposite a low brick building set amidst rolling green slopes and stretches of flag-dotted turf, the storm overtook them.
"Up the driveway," Isabel cried. "We canjust make it. This is the country club—we'll 'phone home where we are staying."
Gerard sent the car up the wide gravelled path. An attendant was waiting to receive them, another assumed charge of the automobile, and Isabel's escort found himself standing beside her on the veranda with rather confused ideas of how the affair had been accomplished.
"Koma says there is no one else here," she informed him. "We have all the place to ourselves. How it rains!"
It certainly was raining, raining violently and steadily, a gray downpour from a gray sky. She paused to look before continuing.
"I'll 'phone to Flavia, first of all. I can see we are going to have a long wait. Koma will get us the best luncheon he knows how. Aren't you hungry? I am. Come in."
Gerard uttered some reply. He was profoundly vexed at his situation, without being able to blame himself for it or to fix any actual fault upon Isabel. She had already turned away to enter the hall, and presently he heard the tinkle of the telephone bell, followed by her high-pitched voice.
"One one seven? Martin, I want Miss Rose. Yes, it is I. Oh!——We're at the country club, Corrie. No, we didn't get lost; we just chosethat road.... Not a bit, it was good sport. We're having luncheon together, here, and then I suppose we will play billiards until the rain stops. Tell Flavia not to worry; we'll get home by dinner-time, and we're enjoying ourselves.... Not wet, just splashed. Mr. Gerard spoiled a handkerchief drying me, that's all the damage. Good-by."
She reappeared on the threshold, complacently satisfied. She had removed her hood and veils, shaken her ruddy hair into becoming disorder, and knew herself at her best.
"You are enjoying yourself, aren't you?" she demanded.
"Certainly," Gerard responded, without enthusiasm.
"Why not come in, then? Which do you like most to commence a luncheon——Blue Points or little clams? Corrie and I quarrel over that every time we are out together. He is as obstinate as, as—Corrie!"
"Clams," said he, at a venture. He had a vague recollection of seeing Corrie dismiss oysters with scorn, and he felt viciously contrary.
"Why, so do I," agreed Isabel winningly. "Let us order some."
One cannot be disagreeable to a young girlunder one's care, who also is in a sense one's hostess. The luncheon was sufficiently gay. The rain fell incessantly, beating against the diamond-paned windows, gurgling down eaves and gutter-ways.
"We should have sailed home in theDear Me," Isabel declared. "I am sure there is enough water on the roads. Why did we not think of it?"
She detached a chrysanthemum petal from the vase of blossoms central on the table, and dropped it into her finger-bowl, watching the agitation of a diminutive scarlet-and-black beetle perched upon the sinking leaf.
"An execution?" Gerard inquired.
She raised her eyes, pouting prettily, and nodded.
"I hate those bugs," she explained. "Ugly animals! We put them in and wager a box of bon-bons on how long they last. If it is still alive at the end of five minutes, I lose. If it is drowned, I win."
"Does Corrie play that game with you?"
"N'no. Corrie doesn't like it. He will step off of a sidewalk into the mud to avoid treading on a cricket. Do you suppose I never play with any one except my cousin? Will you try this wager?You'renot silly?"
"I will, if I may. If that lady-bug is alive five minutes from now, I win? No other conditions?"
"None," gleefully. "Take your watch. You'll lose, he's weakening now."
Gerard leaned across, lifted the struggling beetle upon his finger-tip, and restored it to the safe refuge of the chrysanthemum bouquet.
"I believe he will live some time," he soberly predicted.
The girl stared, frowned, and laughed.
"No fair! No fair! That's not the game, Mr. Gerard."
"No? Then I will send the bon-bons."
"Chocolates."
"They shall be chocolates."
"And I may put back the nasty beetle?"
"On no account; I have ransomed him."
"Oh, very well," she shrugged, rising. "I'll take refuge in billiards for the next game. Corrie taught me to play, but I can beat him, now."
"Perhaps he doesn't watch his game when his opponent is his cousin."
"Why, what else should he watch?" she wondered, arching her brows a trifle too innocently.
"I cannot imagine, if you do not know," Gerard dryly responded, and held open the door for her to pass out.
In the billiard room, Isabel rolled her sleeves above her elbows as a preliminary measure.
"I haven't had that off for a year," she confided, indicating a flexible platinum and turquoise bracelet encircling her firm, sun-browned arm.
"You are fond of it?" her companion inferred. "It is a beautiful bit of work, indeed."
"I like it well enough. That isn't the reason, though. You see, it locks, and after Corrie put it on my arm he kept the key. He says he will give it to me on my wedding day. But it isn't worth that."
"Worth——?" he questioned.
"Getting married. Will you play me even?"
"Pray fix any odds you choose, Miss Rose. How many points does Corrie usually give you?"
This time Isabel's stare of surprise was genuine.
"I meant, how many points should I allowyou," she corrected arrogantly.
"Oh, pardon me!" he submitted. "Suppose, in that case, we play for an even score."
The storm did not abate. The wind drove the rain before it in glistening gray sheets, the steady drumming of the downpour accompanied the click of meeting ivory balls and the occasional speech of the players. After a time, a deep-belled Mission clock in the hall struck four.
A sharp, incredulous cry from the girl rang out, after an interval of silence in the room.
"Why—why, you've won!"
"So I have," acknowledged her antagonist. "Shall I apologize?"
Isabel started to speak, and checked herself. She had been chiefly intent upon her own accomplishment, and Gerard's playing was of a deceptive leisureliness and tranquillity.
"How many did you make in that last run?" she asked, finally.
"Only seventeen."
"You can't do it again."
"One never can tell."
"Play," she defied.
Gerard glanced hopelessly at the streaming windows.
"It is growing late," he demurred.
"Not late, yet. Besides, we can't go out in that weather with an open automobile. They know at home where we are."
They did; that was precisely the core of Gerard's exasperation and unrest. What impressions would this tête-à-tête afternoon convey to Corrie? And what would Flavia think of her guest's guardianship of her cousin? He picked up his cue with enforced resignation.
The clock had struck the half-hour, when a long blast from an electric horn pierced through the clamor of the storm.
"Another motor-party caught out," Isabel hazarded, her tone decidedly cross. She was losing again, and she did not like the experience. "Your play. You seem to find it more amusing to look out the window."
Gerard was spared reply. The billiard-room door was pushed open by the Japanese steward and a figure in gleaming rain-proof attire appeared on the threshold—the figure of a chauffeur, cap in hand.
"Lenoir!" Isabel exclaimed.
The chauffeur saluted.
"Mr. Rose sent the limousine to convey mademoiselle and Mr. Gerard," he informed them, in his precise, Parisian-flavored English.
"My uncle is home?"
"I had just driven Mr. Rose home from the city, mademoiselle, before he telephoned to the garage that I should come here."
She tossed her cue upon the table, recklessly scattering the balls, and turned toward the door.
"Bring our wraps, Koma," she bade. "We had better go."
Gerard contemplated Lenoir with marked kindness.
"It's a bad day to be out," he commented, in following Isabel from the room, and passed into the chauffeur's hand a gratuity out of all proportion to the occasion.
"Yes, sir," said Lenoir, demurely.
The drive home was short and uninteresting. On the veranda of the Rose villa Corrie was waiting to meet the returning two, upon the limousine's arrival.
"Well, of all the slow traveling I ever saw, this is the limit," he greeted them derisively; "From noon until five o'clock! Fancy!"
"Never mind our driving; we have had a fine time," Isabel retorted, with pettish tartness.
"Yes, ma'am, no doubt. I wouldn't have interrupted, myself. It was father who did it, when he came in. He said you'd want some dinner to-night."
He smiled at Gerard as cordially as ever, but there was a wistfulness underlying his expression that inspired the older man with a hearty desire to shake Isabel Rose. She could watch her young lover's emotions with the same diverted interest with which she had watched the struggles of the tiny black-and-scarlet beetle drowning in her finger-bowl.
"I wish you had been with us, Corrie," was all Gerard found to say.
Through the parted curtains, the library presented such a graceful interior study as certain French artists have delighted in drawing. In the octagonal, book-lined room of rich hues and soft lights, Flavia and her father were seated together; busied in pleasant comradeship at the table whose polished surface was littered with letters, books of household accounts, and all those dainty metal and crystal trinkets the jeweller conceives necessary to the writer. Evidently they had found refreshment desirable, for a diminutive tea-table still stood near Flavia, while a pushed-back chair beneath which a young Great Dane hound lay asleep indicated that Corrie had been one of the group.
"Back, are you?" Mr. Rose called cheerily, to the two in the hall, leaning back in his chair to view them more easily. "When I heard where you were marooned, I guessed it was about time for a rescue. You children oughtn't to try roundabout country roads with a storm blowing up."
"Mr. Gerard wanted to go that way," Isabel alleged, with perfect assurance. "I told him to do as he chose."
That distortion of facts was too much to be endured, with Corrie listening and Flavia a witness. Gerard's chivalry momentarily lapsed andhe struck back with all the effectiveness of superior experience.
"Yes, certainly," he confirmed, carefully distinct. "I naturally wanted to get Miss Rose safely at home as soon as possible, and since she said that road was the shortest route, I took it, of course."
"Theshortest?" Corrie echoed, astounded. "The——"
He broke the speech in time, hastily discreet. Isabel crimsoned hotly; the glance she darted at her late escort was not dovelike. It was Flavia who brought relief to the situation, as usual.
"These Long Island roads are outrageously misleading," she offered light suggestion, rising with a smiling gesture of excuse to her father. "Isa and I often lose our way when we drive out together. Don't you want to change your damp things, dear?"
"Yes," assented her cousin, sullenly. "It's time to make ready for dinner, anyhow."
Corrie held aside the curtain for the girls to pass out. His blue eyes were dancing in pure mischief and relief. All the household understood Isabel's propensity for flirtation—and its utter lack of significance. If she had detained Gerard,not Gerard her, her lover-cousin had no ground for especial apprehension.
"Punk weather," he commented, coming back.
"Dullest I ever experienced," supplemented his guest decidedly.
Mr. Rose set a paper-weight on the letter open before him, and lit a cigar.
"We were discussing the buying of another automobile, Gerard, when you came in," he imparted. "Come sit down for half an hour before we dress—we not needing so long as the ladies for it—and give us your advice on the choice."
"And I'll give you one of my monogram cigarettes," volunteered Corrie, slipping a hand affectionately through Gerard's arm. "Oh, no—I don't smoke them, but I like to carry them. And when you want something extra fine, you ask Corwin B. Rose for one of his smokes. Let's sit here, together."
On the threshold of his father's model garage Corrie stopped, surveying the scene presented in the centre of the huge, lofty stone room, bare except for the five automobiles ranged around and their countless appurtenances disposed upon walls and shelves.
"Excuse me, but when did you two last wash?" he jeered.
The two men beside the Mercury racing car looked up at the figure in the sunny doorway.
"I don't care to try to prove that I ever did," returned Gerard. "The evidence is against me. But Rupert had his beauty bath this morning, all right. You're looking rather disarranged, yourself; perhaps the course was a trifle dusty."
They laughed silently across at one another. The trim garments of all three men were gray with dust and oil, their faces were streaked and spotted with the caked road-soil. There was little difference in color between Gerard's brown ripples of hair, Corrie's blonde locks and the black head of the mechanician who bent over the motor.
"If this is practice work,whatis the race going to be like?" speculated Corrie, dragging off his gauntlets. The recent speed-exhilaration was still heavily upon him; as with his sister, the darker shading of brows and lashes always gave his fair-tinted face a warm vividness of expression. "The course is in fierce shape, already. I say—why did you especially warn me that the road wouldn't be fit for fast going until to-morrow, then get out in your own machine and break all practice records for the fastest lap? Trying to keep me out of your way, or to break your neck and Rupert's?"
"The first, certainly," Gerard asserted. "Really, I didn't mean to do any speeding to-day, Corrie, but when I saw the white road ahead, I—think something slipped."
"You're a cheerful hypocrite, all right. Here, catch, baseballist!"
Gerard retreated a step and deftly caught the dripping missile as it hurtled across the garage.
"You ought to wring out your league sponges," he reproved. "Thanks; I was wondering how I could take this face into the house, unless I got Rupert to turn the hose on me. You see, I might meet some one."
"You'd meet Flavia," Corrie declared, busyinghimself with his own ablutions. "She's out there in the flowing arbor, sewing some gimcrack thing and pretending she hasn't been worrying because I was out on the course. She comes downstairs every morning to see me start—you know that—and then sits around all day watching until I come in again. None of that for Isabel; she's a sport."
Gerard shook the water from his thick hair and finished the perfunctory toilet without replying. But as he passed Rupert, he dropped a light hand on the mechanician's shoulder.
"When you marry, Jack Rupert, will the girl be a sport?" he questioned.
"My wedding cards ain't paining me bad just now."
"Well, but suppose the case."
The black eyes lifted for a moment from the task in hand.
"I guess I'd be sport enough for one house," Rupert impassively pronounced. "I hate a crowd."
Gerard nodded to the boy across the garage, his face gleaming into mirth.
"Coals to Newcastle," he signified. "Everyone doesn't like to live shop."
There was the splashing thud of an overturnedbucket. As Gerard passed out the door, Corrie overtook him.
"Gerard," he panted, "Gerard, you said that purposely! You meant to tell me that—that Isabel—that you——"
Gerard regarded him quietly, a little smile curving his lips.
"You meant to tell me that I needn't worry about you and Isabel; that you've seen I want her, and you won't cut in? You meant that?"
The smile crept to Gerard's eyes, but he remained mute. With a quick breath Corrie grasped his companion's hand and squeezed it ardently.
"You'rebig, Allan Gerard. And kind. For I've been watching, these ten days, and you could get her if you tried."
He turned back into the building before contradiction was possible. After a moment, Gerard went on down the path between the althea bushes.
The "flowing arbor" of Corrie's description was a decorative masterpiece of Mr. Rose's own design; a large, pink marble fountain, surrounded by a pink-columned arcade strewn with rugs and cushions. Whatever its architectural faults, it was a fairy-tale place of gurgling water and soft shadows, shot through with the tints of silver spray, rosy stone and deep green turf. Flavia wasseated here, in the summer-warm sunshine of early October that had succeeded the storms of the previous week, a long strip of varicolored embroidery lying across her lap and the overfed Persian kitten nestling against her light gown.
"Corrie is home," Gerard announced, pausing in one of the arched openings. "But I suppose you saw him come in, from here."
The young girl lifted to him the frank welcome of her glance and smile, with their pathetic shade of hostess dignity.
"I saw you both come in," she confirmed. "One sees a great deal from this watch-tower. But it is good of you to tell me; you know how glad I am when he is back. Will you not rest before you go into the house? Corrie always comes here first; to gather strength, he says, to climb the terrace steps."
"I am not fit," he deprecated. "I would soil your purple with my dust and poison, your Venetian atmosphere with gasoline fumes."
"Corrie does it."
"Corrie is privileged. The first time I ever saw you, you were watching Corrie. You made me feel that I lived in a barn."
"A——"
"A blank, impersonal, vacant set of rooms. Ahouse where, if I were brought in on a shutter, there would be no one except the undertaker to pull down the shades."
Flavia winced, shocked out of her calm.
"Please do not! I—please do not say those things."
"There, you see. I do not even know how to talk to you properly. It doesn't worry me to think about just dying and I forgot that other people dislike the subject. Now, it was living that made me envy Corrie and feel melancholy."
Flavia drew the silk thread with slow accuracy. Her pulses were commencing to beat heavy strokes, she dared not raise her troubled eyes to the dominant, self-possessed man opposite. There was a pause.
"In novels," Gerard mused, "when a man sees the woman who locks the wheels of his fancy, he drops everything else and follows her until he gets—his answer. But in real life we're pretty stupid; we let circumstances interfere, or we don't quite realize what has happened to us, we don't do the right thing, anyway. Sometimes we're lucky enough to get another chance. If we do——"
The gush and ripple of the fountain, the rustle of the broad-leaved lilies as the changing breeze sent the spray pattering across them; filled pleasantly the lapses of his leisurely speech. Flavia was acutely conscious of his steady gaze upon her bent head, and the unhurried certainty with which he was moving toward his chosen goal. Only, what was that goal? She remembered Isabel's sureness of her own attraction, Isabel's deliberate monopoly of Gerard's attention whenever possible during the last ten days, and Corrie's assertion that his cousin was "just the kind of girl Gerard would like." Yet, he was saying this to her, Flavia. And suddenly she was almost sure of what she never had dared imagine.
She had no thought that Gerard might be hesitating in uncertain humility before the delicate maidenhood that invested her like a fine atmosphere forbidding approach. She was not even dimly aware that her averted face controlled to soft impassivity, the intent gaze on her work which veiled her eyes beneath their heavy lashes, the regular movement of her slender fingers as she sewed, conveyed an impression of unmoved serenity that might have quelled a vainer man than Allan Gerard. Yet it was so, and he temporized; not knowing that for her there were three people in the arcade, the third Isabel, and not daring to continue his broken sentence.
"I have been wondering if you ever translatedyour name," he remarked, when silence verged on embarrassment. "I have wondered many times if it were just chance that called you so."
"My Mother was Flavia Corwin; I am named for her. What does it mean?" she answered, surprised.
Just for an instant she looked at him, and in the one encounter of glances innocently undid all her reserve had built up. Gerard's color ran up under his clear skin like a girl's, brilliant-eyed, he took a step into the arcade.
"It's too late in the season to tell you out here," he demurred. "I'll send you the translation this evening, if I may. There's something else I'd like to tell you, but I've got to find some civilized clothing, first. Essex lost his head for approaching the Queen in his riding-dress, and I'm risking more. I——"
"Hurry up, you two!" hailed Corrie's injured voice, the ring of his step sounded in the stone arcade. "It's six o'clock now. Come on in."
"I'll come," Gerard answered the summons, again his warm, sparkling gaze caught and held Flavia's as, startled, she raised her head. "I was telling Miss Rose that I must get rid of this road dust. But I wasn't thinking of eating, then."
Scarlet rushed over Flavia's face and neck. As Corrie took gay possession of Gerard and borehim off, she sank back in her chair, winding her fingers hard into the embroidery. Not the omnivorous Isabel's, this! There was nothing to fear, ever again. She had the perfect certainty that Gerard would complete that purpose of his the next time they met. And they would meet in an hour. Suddenly she caught up the drowsy kitten and hid her face against the soft living toy.
They did meet in an hour, but it was on the way to dinner, and the exuberant Corrie held the reins of conversation.
"I've discharged Dean," was his first announcement. "Take those oysters away from in front of me, Perkins; I want my soup right now and a lot of it—about a gallon. Never mind anyone else; I haven't had anything but sandwiches since breakfast."
"Discharged your mechanician one day before the race?" marvelled Gerard. "What will you do?"
"Oh, I'm going out to the garage after dinner to hire him over again. He's used to it. Now, I suppose that if you fired Jack Rupert, you'd never see him again."
"I certainly would not."
"Well, that's the difference. I'm afraid of Rupert, myself. Dean hasn't any dignity."
"Neither have you," observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then lead him around the kitchen and feed him porterhouse steak."
"That was remorse," Mr. Rose suggested, coolly amused. He looked across at Gerard, as at the only other grown person present. "You'd best take a porterhouse steak to Dean when you go, Corwin B. It's a fine temper you've got."
"All right, sir, if you say it. I guess Dean would eat a porterhouse, if he isn't a Great Dane puppy. But I saw a man to-day in a temper that makes anything I ever did read like a chapter from Patient Griselda."
"He must have been a lunatic," Isabel kindly inferred.
Her cousin put his elbows on the table and contemplated her with mock reproach; looking rather nearer his sixteenth year than his nineteenth in this mood of effervescent gayety. Ever since his interview with Gerard, in the garage that afternoon, his high spirits had been unquenchable.
"You're cross, Isabel," he stated frankly. "Where did you get the grouch? That's a stunning purple frock you've got on."
"It isn't, it's mauve," corrected Isabel, but shesmiled and smoothed a chiffon ruffle. "Who was your man, then, Corrie?"
"He was the French driver of the Bluette car, and he came into the judges' stand to make a complaint against another fellow who wouldn't give him the road. Kept getting in front, you know, whenever the Bluette wanted to pass, and cutting it off so it had to fall behind. He was in a French calm, all right, and I don't wonder. But I don't believe anyone could really carry it through, could they, Gerard?"
Gerard roused himself from his study of Flavia, as she sat in her ivory-tinted lace gown at the foot of the table, her small head bent under its weight of gleaming fair hair. The massively handsome room, with its rich hues of gilded leather, mellow Eastern rugs and hangings, carved wood and glinting metal, enchanted him as a background for her dainty youth as if he had never seen it there before or might again. It was difficult for him to look away.
"Carry it through?" he repeated. "Of course, easily."
"Not with some drivers! Not with me!"
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't stand it. Because I'd drive through the car ahead if it tried to keep meback. Oh, I'd have them out of my way—you'relaughingat me, Allan Gerard!"
Gerard was certainly laughing, and the others with him.
"If I were Dean, I wouldn't wait to be fired, Corrie; I'd resign," he rallied. "Some day I'll challenge you to a game of auto tag, and show you that trick."
"You can't; I'd get by," Corrie retorted, his violet-blue eyes afire with excitement.
"Instead of you two fighting about that nonsense, you might take me around the course in one of your cars," Isabel remarked gloomily. "I've asked you often enough."
"You'll not do that," Mr. Rose pronounced with decision. "It's not fit and I won't have it. And I'm tired of hearing you sulk at Corrie and Gerard because they've got the sense to say no. You'll keep out of the racing cars and off the race track, my girl. Flavia, if you don't make your brother stop eating nuts, he'll be ashamed to meet a squirrel in the woods."
There was open mutiny in the glance Isabel darted at her uncle, but she said nothing. Mr. Rose was not contradicted in his own house by anyone.
"Nuts agree with me, sir," Corrie protested,aggrieved. "Besides, I feel as if I had to celebrate somehow; I have had such a bully day." He leaned back in his chair, turning to Gerard his gaze of shining acknowledgment and measureless content. "I don't think I ever spent such an all-round good old day, just all right all through. I shall have to tie a gold medal on the calendar, or mark it with a white stone, or——"
"Or drop a pearl in the vase of Al-Mansor," Gerard suggested. His own feelings were not very far removed from Corrie's, that night.
"What is that?" Isabel questioned. "I never heard that story. What is the vase of Al-Mansor?"
"A legend of the days of the caliphs. If you care about it, some day I will find a copy to send."
"Some day! I want to hear it now."
"Tell us, with all the trimmings," Corrie urged, "No sliding around the flowery parts and cutting scenes, but the full performance. Flavia loves that sort of thing, too; she and I grew up on the Arabian Nights and Byron and Irving. We dramatized 'The Fall of Granada,' for the toy theatre, but Bulwer was dead, so it didn't matter.
"Perkins, up in my den you'll find a five-pound box of Turkish Delight, sent to-night from thecandy shop; bring it here to help the Oriental atmosphere."
Flavia looked up, and Gerard caught her eyes, no longer quite untroubled before his own.
"What a set of comparisons to face," he deprecated. "Shall I dare it, Miss Rose?"
"Would you leave us to suffer all the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity?" she wondered. "To dream all night of elusive pearls that disappear in their vase as Cleopatra's in her goblet of vinegar?"
Mr. Rose took a cigar and a match, nodding humorously at his guest.
"You're in for it," he signified. "Better get it over."
"And no cutting," exacted Corrie,sotto voce.
"Very well, then; pray imagine yourselves in the bazaar, and remember this isn't my fault," Gerard submitted. He paused, assembling his recollections. "On ascending the throne at Bagdad, in the full noon of the glory of the caliphs; it is told that Al-Mamoun, the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, the great-grandson of Al-Mansor, received from the former vizier a small golden vase.
"'Lord of the East, newly-risen Sun of the true believers,' said the vizier, 'your great-grandfather of venerated memory caused to be made this vase, proposing to place therein a pearl forevery day of perfect happiness he should pass. And when he received the vase from the goldsmith, he complained that the vase was too small. But, alas, the mighty Al-Mansor died without ever putting in a single pearl, for the day when the vase came home he learned that his loved sultana plotted against his life.
"'After many years, in his turn came to rule your illustrious father, Haroun the Wise, and took the vase. He, the great king, who never travelled without a hundred scholars in his train, who built a school for poor children beside every mosque, he the magnificent in war and peace, in all his long reign enriched the vase by two pearls; the day of his coronation and the day of his death; the day before he saw Marida the Beautiful and the day he forgot her forever. Now, Commander of the Faithful, according to my charge I deliver the vase to you, with hope that your joys may exhaust the sea of pearls.'
"Hearing, Al-Mamoun fell into profound musing.
"'Vizier,' he said, 'I cannot mark the day I began to reign, who loved my father and take his place with tears, and the day of my death no man knows. But, by the favor of Allah, I will add one pearl to the vase while I live.'
"The next morning many workmen came to the palace. Around the fairest part of the garden they reared a lofty wall, within its circle they placed everything which the king might desire. On the day appointed, in that spot assembled his favorite musicians, the scholars in whose conversation he most delighted, the captains whose faces reminded him of victories and the poets whose words fell like drops from the spring that bubbles before Allah's throne in Paradise. Only, because women had troubled the days of Al-Mansor and Haroun, no woman was admitted.
"With pomp, music and rejoicing, Al-Mamoun moved at sunrise to the garden of delights that was to shelter him from the world for one day. But, as his foot touched the threshold, a great cry of lamentation went through the palace.
"'What now?' demanded the king, halting.
"A guard of the serail answered, his brow in the dust:
"'Lord, the sultana has drowned herself in the Court of Fountains, because of grief that your day of perfect happiness could be passed without her.'
"Then Al-Mamoun drew back his foot and returned to the palace, knowing that from him the golden vase would claim no pearls."
"That is all?" Isabel asked expectantly.
"What more could there be, mademoiselle?"
"There might be a moral," Corrie suggested, leaning his folded arms on the table, his interested eyes fixed upon the story-teller.
"When I read the Arabian Nights, I found out that Oriental tales have no morals," dryly observed Mr. Rose. "A man who had been brought up with the Blarney Stone for a teething-ring once sold me an unexpurgated edition de luxe, with illustrations, so I ought to know."
"I never saw it, sir!"
"No, Corwin B., you did not. You can if you want to, by coming down to my office, where it is still lying in the packing-box it came in. I don't think you want to. Gerard's story isn't there."
"Its moral seems to be that women are a nuisance," Isabel commented, her manner injured.
"That would not be a moral, it would be a falsehood," Gerard demurred. "No, I fancy the moral might be, do not challenge Fate to a duel. Are you considering our nonsense, Miss Rose?"
"I was thinking of the story," Flavia amended. "I was wondering if the kings would not soon have filled the vase had they been content to mark each happy hour, and whether a wise treasurer ofhappiness would not find a vase filled with seed-pearls where they found a vase empty."
"Exactly! You have found the secret, no doubt. Moral: do not ask too much."
"A day too much?" marvelled Corrie. "Why, I expect a lifetime!" He flung back his head, looking around the smiling circle. "Well, why not? What's a lifetime, anyhow? Not half enough to get all the fun there is in living, as long as you do no harm by it. And who wants to do any harm when there is so much else to do? Not anyone in his right mind. Anyway, I've got to-day's pearl canned, anditcan't get away. And I can think of lots of others I've had, if I could go back for them."
"Shall I guess the name of Al-Mansor's vase?" Flavia asked, as she rose. She was smiling, but her cheeks were flushed and her serious eyes caressed her brother. "It was Memory, I think. And, no, Corrie, the pearls put there cannot be lost."
The extreme warmth of the day had continued into the evening. As Isabel followed Flavia across the hall, Corrie overtook his cousin, wound a scarf around her bare shoulders and lured her out on the veranda. She yielded not unwillingly, contrary to her recent custom of neglecting him,and they disappeared together. Any such latent project of Gerard's was prevented by Mr. Rose's mood for chat, a mood not usual for him.
"You are not looking much like the driver I met on the way home, to-day," he informed his guest, surveying Gerard quizzically, when they were established in the drawing-room. "But I didn't recognize my own son, for that matter. He don't seem like mine, when he's out in those goblin clothes driving like Satan in a hurry. It's sensible enough for you, being in the automobile trade, but for him it's just fool play."
"He does it a little too well to call it that," Gerard returned seriously.
"Yes? Well, I've got money enough to pay for it—although it's the most expensive game he's found yet—or for anything else he fancies. I've told him to amuse himself for a while. He is too young to settle down to work, when there is no need for it. I never had any playing time, and I want to see him have his. And he has earned it, too; I suppose he told you he was through college?"
"Yes, and amazed me."
"He knew it had to be done, so he did it quickly and without any nonsense. It's an old theory that given liberty and money, a boy will go to ruin.I never believed it; I don't yet. And I never saw why I should make my son a different set of living rules from those I make for myself. Of course, I don't mean there was no law in the house; I don't think I spoiled Corrie. But I've left him pretty free, only bidding him keep straight. That I must have, and he knows it. He has got to keep straight."
A sudden grate like metal on metal roughened the deliberate speech with a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely startled eyes to her father.
"I don't believe you need to worry about that," reassured Gerard smiling. The echo of Corrie's fresh young tones was in their ears, as he disputed with his cousin, outside the windows at the end of the room.
"I guess not. He's too much like his mother." Mr. Rose dropped his hand on Flavia's, as she sat in her low chair beside him. "And she was what they call an aristocrat, nowadays, but I called a lady when I married her. Old family, gentle breeding, the society end, and good looks like my little girl's that seem too fine to touch; she had all and everything except money. And I gave her that."
Flavia leaned nearer to her father with thecaressing confidence in mutual affection which marked all the household intercourse and pervaded the gorgeous pink villa like an actual fragrance of atmosphere.
"I gave her that. She liked to spend it. Not," his keen eyes suddenly sprang challengingly to the other man's, "Not that she married me for money. Don't think it. My wife loved me. I guess I struck her family like a cyclone; I was self-made and used to my own way, at thirty, and not uglier than my neighbors. Mrs. Tom Rose was a happy woman, until she died, when Corrie was two years old and Flavia four." He rose bruskly and crossed the room. "You don't smoke, Gerard? I always spoil a cigar when I talk."
"I don't unless there's something wrong," Gerard answered, tactfully casual. "A cigarette helps, then. But everything is very right, now. You know, these races are my holidays, although they are an important business feature, too. My factory affairs keep me hard at work most of the year. Then in the intervals I am designing and having constructed a genuine racing machine of my own, much more powerful than the ninety Mercury I'm driving now. I'm not an idle citizen, really."
Flavia's head drooped lower. He was tellingher father these things as part of that steady purpose whose object she felt herself; she knew it, clairvoyantly acute.
"You get a lot out of living," commented Mr. Rose, coming back to his seat. "You enjoy it, I'm thinking."
"Yes, I do," Gerard replied candidly. "Why not?"
"You're right. Now, I want to tell you about a deal I put through in the Street, to-day."
Flavia moved to the piano and began to touch the keys. She knew there would be only men's talk for a while, and from this place she could watch Gerard unseen. In all the previous days she had avoided this, refusing to take cognizance of the physical beauty upon which Isabel dilated, half-unconsciously defending herself from an undefined danger. She commenced to play pastel-toned bits of Nevin and Chaminade, her clear eyes delighting in free vision.
Out on the veranda, Corrie was sustaining a defense of his own. Upright against a column, scarlet with determination, Isabel pursued the wilful desire she had voiced at the dinner-table.
"That Frenchwoman was around the course with her husband, yesterday," she urged. "Other women have done it before. Why won't you take me?"
"You might get hurt. Father never would let you."
"He needn't know, stupid. You don't want to, that's all. I'll ask Mr. Gerard; he'll like to take me."
The poison had been drawn from that sting, but Corrie winced, nevertheless.
"Iwantyou, Isabel. I love you."
"You're a boy; I'm a year older than you."
"Eleven months!"
"Anyhow, I'm a woman. I do what I choose, while you're afraid to move for fear uncle will catch you. What would he do, ferule your little palms?"
Furious, Corrie sprang across and dropped his hands on her shoulders with the freedom of their life-long intercourse.
"I'd like to ferule yours," he gritted between his set teeth. "I'm as much a man as you are a woman. You haven't anysense. And there's no use of your dangling after Allan Gerard, for he don't want you—he said as much. I'm going in, and I won't take you around the course."
Gasping, Isabel let him reach the French windows of the drawing-room before recovering herself. Then she rushed in pursuit, tripping impatiently over her long chiffon skirts.
"Corrie—wait! Corrie!"
He turned sullenly, secretly aghast at his own temerity. But Isabel laid her hand on his sleeve without anger.
"You're more man than I thought," she breathed. "I always liked you better than anyone else, anyhow. Corrie, if you'd take me around the course, early in the morning when no one here knew, I believe you'd be almost grown up enough to—to—be engaged."
"Isabel!" he cried, fire kindling in his face. "You would? You would?"
"If I get my ride——"
He seized her, boy-clumsily, and boy-like lavished his impetuous kisses.
"You'll get anything," he promised, half-choked by excitement. "And everything. Oh, Isabel!"
Flavia's delicate music flowed on and on. Before Mr. Rose had finished his discussion, Corrie and Isabel entered the room, and the evening ended without any possibility of Gerard's resuming the theme commenced in the fountain arcade.
When the group separated for the night, Corrie detained his sister at the foot of the wide, gleaming stairs.
"Don't rise early in the morning to give me my coffee, Other Fellow," he said. "I shan't be starting for the course at the usual time. I havebeen working pretty steadily and I need to rest for the race itself, day after to-morrow."
She leaned across the bannister to him; the two young faces framed in young ripples of bright hair resembled each other very strongly in their twin moods of exaltation and radiant, half-incredulous happiness.
"You do not feel unwell, dear? You have not driven too much?"
"Not a bit. But I'm sleepy," he caught a frond of a tall Madeiran fern that was placed in its jardiniere on the step opposite him, winding the satin-green strip over his finger, "honestly, all in with sleepiness, and I'm going to sleep to-night as if it was the last quiet night's sleep I'd ever get. See you to-morrow, kid sister."
"Good-night, dearest."
So, since she was not to give Corrie his morning coffee, she would not give Gerard's to him or see him until his return from the race course. As a matter of course, it was not to be contemplated that she should rise at dawn for a tête-à-tête breakfast with the guest, at this period when all the fine elements that composed their relation hesitated at the point of crystallization. But she scarcely regretted the postponed interview. It would be better to meet each other differently, atmore leisure. He would come again to the fountain arcade, where she watched for Corrie's return.
When Flavia reached her own room, there stood on her dressing-table a long silver-paper and filigree box. Wondering, she raised the lid, to be met with a gust of exquisite perfume and confronted with a mass of frail yellow roses, lovely with the quaint, virginal beauty of suggestion that separates them from all their other-colored kin. Across the glistening petals lay a cover cut from a pocket dictionary, bearing written upon it one sentence: "Definition of the meaning of Flavia Rose."
She laid her head beside the flowers, gold upon gold. She, also, the fancy came to her, had placed this day in the vase of Al-Mansor. But the day to come outshone it, as a rosy pearl one merely white.
"To-morrow," she whispered to herself. "To-morrow."
Gray, sluggish, slow in coming and sullen of aspect, a reluctant dawn succeeded the night. A wet mist clung everywhere in the windless atmosphere, muffling sound as well as light. There was not even a servant stirring in the Rose house, when Gerard descended the dark stairs and went out into the chill, damp park.
In the garage one bright point shone out; under a swinging electric lamp Rupert was preparing his machine to go out, a solitary figure in the expanse of wavering shadows and dim bulks.
"Where are Rose and his man?" Gerard questioned, as he came across the floor.
His voice rolled startlingly loud in the lofty, echoing room. Moving to reply, the mechanician let fall a tool and the crash repeated itself sharply from every stone arch and angle.
"Rose won't be out at the course till late; I guess our peaceful life ain't what he's used to, exactly. He 'phoned over last night to Dean, who's sleeping yet."
Gerard nodded, eyeing the Mercury racer with affectionate attention.
"All right, is she?" he asked.
Rupert straightened himself and proceeded to close the hood.
"I ain't supposing we'll need to be towed," he conceded sarcastically. "But I'll put in a rope, if you're worried bad, and take my copy ofMotor Repairing at a Glance."
"Do," Gerard urged. "I'd like to have it found on you, Rupert. Start her up, then, if you're ready."
He crossed, with the last word, to the shelf where lay his racing mask and gauntlets. The melancholy drip from moist eaves and trees, the dreary half-light and heavy air had absolutely no depressing power upon his flawless nerves and vigor of life. By the open door he paused to look out, unconsciously clasping his hands behind his head with the leisurely grace and relaxation of one who found pleasure in mere movement.
"There'll be a wet course," Rupert's muffled tones came from the opposite end of the room.
"Well?" Gerard queried lazily. "What of it?"
There was no answer. Instead sounded the click of moving throttle and spark, and the place burst into thunderous tumult; violet flames darted from the exhausts and enfolded the hood of thevibrating car as it moved forward to its master's side.
"I don't like this morning, and I don't like this course," stated Rupert, sombrely definite, through the roar and rattle of irregular reports from the cut-down motor. "But I guess I've got to stand for them. Anyhow, I couldn't have a classier Friday-the-thirteenth emotion equipment if I had been to a voodoo fortune teller who had a grudge against me. What are we waiting for?"
Gerard lingered in taking his seat, his amazed eyes travelling over the small, discontented dark face of his companion.
"Something's wrong, Rupert?"
"I ain't saying so—yet."
The driver's own expression shadowed slightly; he looked again and more searchingly at the other. In common with most men who had lived in the tense atmosphere of the most dangerous form of racing yet evolved, he had witnessed more than one case where a presentiment did not fail of fulfilment. Irrespective of whether catalogued as coincidence, occult foresight or absurdity, the facts did exist, occasionally to be read in the prosaic columns of a newspaper, more often lost except in camp annals. He knew, and Rupert knew, of a mechanician who suddenly refused absolutely to go out with the driver by whose side he had ridden countless miles, having no better reason than a disinclination for the trip. And they both had seen the substitute who took his place brought in dead, an hour later, after his car's wreck. A widely-known victor of many races, one of Gerard's close friends, had come to shake hands with him in a state of causeless nervousness that would have shamed a novice, just before starting on the ride from which he never returned. The price of debate is too high to argue with some things; Gerard temporized.
"I don't want to take you out feeling like that. Give yourself a day off," he suggested. "I'll find one of the factory men to go out with me for the morning's practice."
"Who's crazy now?" inquired his mechanician acidly, and flung himself back in his narrow seat.
The Mercury slipped through Mr. Rose's winding drives, plunged into the sandy Long Island road, and sped lurching toward the course.
There was nothing dull or depressing about the starting point, at the Motor Parkway. Before the busy row of repair pits throbbed and panted some of the cars, surrounded by their force of workers; in other camps the men stood, watch in hand, timing the machines already out. Reportersvibrated everywhere; surrounded by an admiring group, two world-famous French and Italian drivers were pitching pennies for the last cigarettes from a box of special brand. Only the tiers of empty seats in the grand-stand and the absence of spectators in fields and parking-spaces distinguished this practice morning from the actual race.
There was a general movement of greeting as the Mercury rolled in and Gerard sprang out at his own camp.
"Where's your pink pet, Allan?" called a driver, from the starting line. "What's up—mornin' air too crude for millionaire kids?"
"Heisn'tup," was the blithe reply. "Never mind Rose, he's coming; tell me where you got your five-cylinder machine, Jack."
"A late Rose, eh? Oh, I've got six cylinders here, all right, but I daren't run on all of them now for fear my speed would make the rest of you quit, discouraged. I'm goin' to make your yesterday's record look like a last year's timetable, this mornin'."
"You look out that you don't break your neck. Rupert says it's a hoodoo day. We don't want you in the hospital twice this season."
"Is Rupert sad?" questioned the big blondepilot of the neighboring camp, leaning over the railing.
"I ain't been so near it since I put my foot in a hole and sprained my ankle ten minutes before the start, when I was racing with Darling French at Philadelphia," admitted the mechanician. "It hurt me fierce."
"Your ankle?"
"No, seeing him start without me."
"Say, Gerard, there's your pink Rambler," a distant voice signified.
About to send his car forward, Gerard paused to glance over his shoulder, and caught the pink flash behind a row of mist-draped trees edging the cross-road. Sudden mischief curved his lips, his amber eyes laughed behind their goggles.
"Tell Corrie Rose I'll give him that game of auto tag, if he happens along while I'm on a straight stretch," he called across to one of Corrie's men, by way of farewell.
A little breeze stirred the mist, as the Mercury shot down the course; the gray light was brightening by slow gradations.
There was small probability that Gerard's car and the rose-colored machine would soon find themselves together on the twelve-mile circuit, allowing for their difference in starting time. But as theMercury turned into the straight stretch of back road, on the second time around, there sounded a sharp report, the car staggered perilously, and a tire tore itself loose from a rear wheel to hurtle, a vicious projectile of rubber and steel, far across the stubble fields. Reeling, but held to its course by the driver's trained hand, the Mercury slackened its flight and was brought to a stop. Rupert was already leaning over the back, dragging free a spare tire; Gerard slipped out of his seat.
For experts the task was not long. A white car thundered past the workers, leaving a swirl of dust and flying pebbles, its mechanician turning to survey the halted Mercury. As Rupert swept the last tool into its place with precise swiftness, the throbbing of a second motor drifted to them, a pink streak darted around a distant curve.
"It's Corrie," identified Gerard. "Get in, Rupert. If he wasn't forced by his money into the amateur ranks, that boy would make some of us work to keep our laurels, all right."
The panther-agile figure swung into place beside him.
"I ain't a market gardener," Rupert drawled, fitting one small foot in a strap support, as the car leaped forward. "But I guess those plants ain't apt to flourish in too rich soil."
The Mercury did not gather speed too rapidly, rather it lingered until the pink car bore close down upon it.
"How near?" suddenly demanded Gerard, above the noise of the motor.
The mechanician reconnoitred.
"Hundred feet," he made report.
"Wave to him."
Rupert raised his hand obediently. The Mercury sprang ahead under Gerard's touch, and with an answering roar the rose-colored machine sped in pursuit.
There was no doubt that Corrie understood the play; nor that his car was easily capable of passing the sixty-mile an hour gait now held by the Mercury. But he was not allowed to pass. Each time he essayed it, the other racer swerved in front and cut off the road.
It was as dangerous a game as could well be designed, had either driver been less skilled, but it was safe enough now. Gerard was laughing as he drove, when the first tiny missile rattled against his car.
"He's pitching spare bolts," shouted Rupert, at his companion's ear, himself grimly amused. "Peevish, ain't he?"
Gerard nodded, and crossed the narrow roadwith an unexpected turn that drew a baffled explosion from the checked car behind. A brass nut smacked the Mercury's gasoline tank. It was not difficult to imagine Corrie's excited tempest of defeat, to those who knew him.
"The turn's ahead—we'll call it off there," Gerard answered mirthfully. "Give her some oil."
The two cars were rushing down the last half-mile of straight road. Rupert was stooping to reach the oil pump when the pink car made its final attempt to pass and was again forced back, but across his outstretched arm he glanced up to Gerard, and glimpsed the last flying missile as it came.
"Duck!" he shouted harshly, "Look out——"
There was no time for action. As Gerard turned his head, the heavy steel wrench struck him below the right temple. Even Rupert's swiftness was too slow; the driver fell forward across his steering-wheel before the mechanician could snatch it from the inert grasp. With a lurch the speeding Mercury caught in a rut, swerved from the road and, leaping a yard-high embankment, crashed through a row of trees to roll over and over like a broken toy, scattering splintered wreckage over the farmhouse enclosure beyond.
The light breeze of half an hour earlier hadfreshened and gained strength, the pale-gray sky was changing to delicate blue. When the horrified knot of reporters and motor enthusiasts from the nearby Westbury corner swarmed into the orchard to join the pale-faced farmer already there, the sun emerged brilliantly from a bank of clouds, glinting across the heap of twisted metal and the still figure that lay beneath it, illumining the dishevelled, gasping mechanician who struggled dizzily to rise from where he had been flung to safety, fifty feet from the wreck.
It is difficult for any group of men, however willing, to work without a leader. While the inexperienced rescuers stood hesitating on the verge of action, Corrie Rose in his pink racing costume sprang up the bank, his blue eyes burning in his white face, his lips stained with blood where his teeth had bitten through.
"Get those logs, over there," he commanded savagely. "The car's got to be jacked up. Hurry up—do you want him to die under there?Jump!"
His fiery energy ran through the men with a vivifying shock. Torpor transformed to animation, the grim work was attacked. Under Corrie's brief orders they scattered in search of the logs, a telephone, and such aid as the place afforded.The farmer's wife assumed charge of the semi-conscious Rupert, for whom no one else had time.
Into the prim, staid country parlor they carried Gerard, fifteen minutes later, and laid him on a horse-hair couch under a square-framed lithograph ofThe Trial of John Knox. A plush photograph album was jostled on its marble table by the driver's shattered mask and a glove upon whose wrist still clung and ticked his miniature watch, the flowered carpet was trampled under the heedless feet and streaked with dull red here and there.
"They stopped here yesterday for some water," sobbed the mistress of the house hysterically. "Oh dear, dear! Pitching apples across the yard at the little dark one, he was, and both of them making fun."
The rattling explosions of a motor cycle sounded from without; the first of the emergency surgeons to arrive ran up the steps and into the room, stripping off his coat while appraising with keen eyes the unconscious patient.
"Get out, everyone," he directed concisely. "Here, I want a helper—you, Rose?"
Corrie, on his knee beside the couch, looked up and dragged himself erect. Gerard's face was no more drawn and colorless than his, but he answered to the call, as half an hour before he had answered the demand of the situation for a guide.
"I'll help," he consented, his voice hoarse. "I deserve it."
Before the surgeon's imperious gesture, the rest of the men were retreating to leave the room, when those nearest the door were suddenly thrust back. Staggering, furious passion blazing in his scratched and pain-twisted face, Rupert burst across the threshold.
"Alive?" he hurled the fierce question. "Alive? What?"
"Yes," snapped the surgeon. "Cut this sleeve, Rose—gently! Clear out, you; the ambulance men will take care of you when they get here."
Rupert's haggard black eyes embraced the scene, and encountered Corrie.
"You——" he snarled, choking, and whirled to face the witnesses, extending one slim shaking hand toward the workers beside the couch. "Here, I ain't supposing but that most of you are chasing headlines for paper rags—print down that Allan Gerard was killed by that man. I'm saying it; Gerard cut him off from getting past, and he pitched a wrench that knocked him out. Go down to the course and you'll get the wrench to Missouri you, on the road. Rose knocked out Gerard and our car ran wild."
The concentrated vehemence and force of the arraignment stupefied even the reportorial instinct. Dazed, the hearers stared from the mechanician's tattered, accusing figure to the pale young driver who offered neither surprise nor defense, but went steadily on with his unsteadying task.
"He wrecked us——" Rupert made a limping step forward. "Well? Did you guess I was reciting this to put you to sleep? Why ain't you taking him out of here? Puthismechanician through the third degree and get his story—who nailed you fast here? Why don't youmove?"
The scissors slipped tinkling to the floor from Corrie's grasp. Livid with wrath, the surgeon stood up.
"Get out, all, and take that maniac with you," he stormed. "Not a word; I don't care if Rose has murdered all Long Island, he's some use now. Clear out and leave this room quiet. Quick."
He was obeyed, the nearest men drawing Rupert into the retiring group, and the door closed.
Outside, the reporters became themselves. While ambulances dashed up, motor cycles, official cars and private vehicles arrived to halt aroundthe little house, the Mercury's mechanician was hurried apart and his story coaxed from him in detail.
The last automobile to come up, an hour after the accident, was a gilt-monogramed foreign limousine. From it descended a gentleman who, after a comprehensive glance over the disordered, crowded orchard, crossed straight to where Rupert sat hunched on a kitchen chair opposite the shattered car.
"Rupert," he appealed, catching the mechanician's shoulder. "Rupert, what's been happening here?"
Very deliberately Rupert lifted his dark face, its grimness not lessened by flecks and bars of court-plaster; across the apathy of physical exhaustion his black eyes gleamed vivid, hard resolve.
"Your son's finished Gerard, Mr. Rose," he stated, monotonously explicit. "He slipped his temper and fired a wrench at Gerard for not giving him the road. It hit him, and we ran wild without a driver till we struck here. Ask him—he's in there with what's left of Gerard—why he's sent Dean where he ain't to be found, if I'm lying."
Mr. Rose released Rupert's shoulder, both menequally oblivious of the pain his grasp had inflicted on bruised flesh and muscle, and turned his gray face to the surrounding group in dumb quest of confirmation. Then, moving stiffly, he walked toward the house.
There was an authority in his bearing that gained him unopposed entrance. In the hall, nauseating with the ominous odor of antiseptics, he was met by one of the doctors.
"You can turn my house into a hospital," Mr. Rose said briefly. "I want Gerard taken there instead of to your places. You can have all the money you like."
The man looked at the card presented, his professional impassivity flickering, but shook his head.
"He would better not be moved at all, sir; at least, not to-day. He can be asked, if you wish."