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

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

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

But the latter smiled back consolingly.

“Don’t worry.  There are worse things in the world than cutting an appointment for good and sufficient reasons.  You will get back your balance when things get normal again.  I have no complaint to make anyway.  You have kept up the professional end splendidly until now.  What you need is a good long vacation and I am going to pack you off on one at the earliest opportunity.  Do you want me to meet Captain Annersley for you tomorrow?” he switched off to ask.

Larry shook his head.

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

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN WHICH TWO MASSEYS MEET IN MEXICO

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