Red Pepper Burns Part 19

Burns nodded again. "It is."

"You're an a.s.s, then."

"Perhaps."

"You don't expect--her--to stay in Washington waiting for you, do you, when she only came up for that wedding and is going straight back to keep some other engagements? That's what Win says she's to do."

"No, I don't expect her to wait." Burns pulled the slouch hat lower yet.

Chester could barely see his eyes. He could only hear the tone of his denial of any such absurd expectation.

Chester rose and stood looking down at his friend, who had folded his left arm over his right in its sling, as he sat on the chair arm, and looked the picture of dogged resignation.

"I suppose there's some reason at the bottom of what strikes me as pure foolishness," he admitted. "You won't do me the honour of mentioning it?"

"Case of infected wound in the foot. Threatened teta.n.u.s. Five-year-old child."

"n.o.body competent to treat the case but you?"

Burns looked up. Chester saw his eyes now, gloomy but resolute. "No.

It's up to me alone. I owe it to the woman. It's the only child she has left: a girl. It was her boy I sent to a better world with maledictions on his mother's head."

Comprehension dawned at last on Chester's face. He saw that, taking into consideration Burns's feeling in that matter, there was really nothing to be said. "I hope you win out," he evolved at length from the confusion of ideas in his mind.

"I hope I do." Burns rose. "I must send a telegram," he said, and went to the telephone in the inner office.

While he was there Chester heard the honk of the Imp's horn outside.

When Burns came back he opened the outer door and called to Johnny Caruthers, to know if he had obtained the serum for which he had been sent to the druggist. Johnny shouted back that he had. Burns turned to Chester.

"Good night," he said. "Much obliged for waiting up for me."

Then, with a certain fighting expression on his lips which Chester had learned to know meant that his whole purpose was set on the attainment of an end for which no price could be too great to pay, Burns went out to Johnny Caruthers and the Green Imp.

CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH HE HAS HIS OWN WAY

"Doc"--Joe Tressler followed Burns down the path, leaving his wife standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed, on the retreating figure of the man who had saved to her her one remaining child--"Doc, we ain't a-goin'

to forget this!"

"Neither am I, Joe, for various reasons," replied Burns, watching Johnny Caruthers try the Green Imp's spark. He jumped in beside Johnny and looked back at Joe. "Remember, now, keep things going just as I leave them, and I shall expect to find Letty nearly as well as ever when I see her again. I shall be back in five days. Good-bye."

"Yes."

"I'll be around when you get back, with some money."

Burns looked the man in the eye. "Oh, come, Joe, don't say anything you don't mean."

"I mean it this time, Doe--I sure do. Me and the old woman--we--Letty--"

The fellow choked.

"All right, Joe. I'm as glad as you are Letty's safe. Take care of her.

Take care of your wife. Do a stroke of good, back-breaking work once in a while. It'll help that tired feeling of yours that's getting to be dangerously chronic. You've no idea, Joe, what a satisfaction it is, now and then, to feel that you've accomplished something. Try it. Good-bye."

He waved his hand at the woman in the door, who responded with a flutter of her dingy ap.r.o.n; which was immediately thereafter applied to her eyes. Within, by the window, a little pale-faced girl hugged a remarkable doll with yellow hair and a red silk frock.

"You'd ought to be pretty proud, Letty Tressler," said the woman, returning to the small convalescent, "to think Doc kissed you when he left. He's been awful good to you, Doc has, and him with that arm in a sling a-bothering him all the time. But I didn't think he'd do that."

"Maybe it's 'cause I'm so clean now," speculated the child weakly. "When he did it he whispered in my ear that he liked clean faces."

"Letty, you ain't goin' to have any kind o' face but a clean face after this, jest on account o' Doc Burns," vowed her mother emotionally, and the child, her doll pressed against her face, nodded.

Far down the road Burns was bidding Johnny Caruthers put on more speed.

"We have to make time to-day, Johnny," he explained. "I'm going to get off on that ten-thirty to-night if I have to break my other arm to do it. I don't know that I'd be much more helpless than I am now if I did. Curious, Johnny, how many things there are a man can't do with one hand."

"I should say you could do more with that left hand of yours than most folks can with both," declared young Caruthers, honest admiration in his eye.

Burns laughed--a hearty, care-free laugh. He was in wild spirits, Johnny could see that, and wondered why the Doctor should be so happy over pulling a dead-beat family out of their troubles. Everybody knew Joe Tressler. And Johnny understood that the Doctor had given up going away on Joe's account ten days ago, when he took the case on the eve of his departure. Johnny had seen his employer in all stages of tension since that day, as he had driven him out, at first half-a-dozen times in the twenty-four hours, to this same little old wreck of a house. Johnny had driven him to other houses, also to one especially, in the city, where the lad had sat and speculated much on the extremes of experience in the life of a busy pract.i.tioner.

It was to this same house that Johnny took Burns next; a house reached by a long drive through wonderful grounds, to a palace of a home within which the man with his arm in the sling disappeared with precisely the same rather brusque and hurried bearing characteristic of him everywhere. But Johnny could not see within. If he had, his honest eyes might have opened still wider.

On his way upstairs Burns was intercepted by the master of the house.

"You've decided to go with us, Doctor Burns, I hope?" The question was put in the fashion of a person who expects but one answer. But the answer proved to be not that one expected.

"I'm sorry, but I can't do it, Mr. Walworth." Burns's left hand, in the cordial grip which expresses hearty liking, was retained while William Walworth, who was accustomed to be able to arrange all things to his pleasure by the simple expedient of paying whatever it might cost, stared into the bright hazel eyes which met his with their usual straightforward glance.

"Can't'! But you must, my dear Doctor, Pardon me, but I feel that no ordinary considerations can be allowed to stand in the way. My daughter needs your care on this journey. Her mother and I have agreed that her wish to have you with us must be fulfilled. It's an essential factor in her recovery."

"It's not essential at all, Mr. Walworth. Miss Evelyn is well started on the road to full health; she has only to keep on. My going with you would be a mere matter of pleasing her, and that's not in the least necessary."

His smile softened the words which struck upon the ear of the magnate with an unaccustomed sound. Mr. Walworth released Burns's hand, his manner stiffening slightly.

"I must differ with you, Doctor. I feel that at this stage Evelyn's pleasure is a thing to be planned for. She has taken this fancy to have you with us on the Mediterranean cruise. We'll agree to land you and send you home at the end of a couple of months if you positively feel that you can't neglect your practice longer. But let me remind you, Doctor, that your fee will be made to cover all possible income from your practice during that time, and--I shall not be contented to measure its size by that."

It was Burns's turn to stiffen within, if he did not let it show outwardly. He spoke positively and finally. Even William Walworth saw that it would be of no use to urge a man who said quite quietly:

"I've thought it over, as I promised you, and decided against it.

I a.s.sure you I appreciate the honour you would do me, and I should immensely like the experience. But I know my going is not necessary to Miss Evelyn's recovery, and that's the only thing that could make me hesitate. I'll go up and see her at once, if you will forgive my haste.

I have a busy day before me."

William Walworth looked after him as he ran up the stately staircase, and his thoughts were somewhat as Johnny Caruthers's had been. "He's more of a man, crippled like that, than any I know. I wonder why he won't go. I wonder. But he won't, that's settled. Now to appease Evelyn.

He'll not find that so easy."

Burns did not find it easy. He sat down beside the convalescent, a patient who had everything on her side with which to win her chosen physician's consent to stay by her till she should be in the possession once more of the blooming beauty which had made her one of the envied of the earth. He told her, in the direct manner he had used with her father, that he could not fall in with their plans.

When he came away he was tingling all over. It had been so plain. She had tried to disguise it, but she was where she could not run to cover, and he had seen it all. It gave him no pleasure: he was not that sort.