“I’ll go to the studio to-morrow,” said the surgeon.  “I am very much disturbed by what you have told me:  the more so because as a physician I have learned how many impossible things are true.  Have you told me all you wish to?  Or is there more?  Do you think,” he spoke very steadily, “that Barbara cares for this beast?  Such things happen in the world, I know.”

“God forbid,” said Allen, “but I think he has a sort of fascination for her, and that she doesn’t realize it.  You’ll let your visit appear casual and accidental, won’t you?  You won’t let Barbara suspect that I had anything to do with it?”

Dr. Ferris promised, and the two parted with mutual good-will; but neither the next morning, nor the morning after that, was Dr. Ferris at liberty to pay a visit to Barbara in her studio.  Nominally retired from active practice, and devoting whatever of life should remain to surgical experimentation and theory, the sudden and acute jeopardy of an old friend caused him to put all other considerations aside for the time being, and once more to don the white harness of his profession.  For two days Dr. Ferris hardly left his friend’s side; on the morning of the third day, quite worn out, his jumping nerves soothed by a small dose of morphine, he called a taxicab, gave Barbara’s number in McBurney Place, leaned back against the leather cushions, relaxed his muscles, and fell asleep.

The taxicab and the legless man reached the curb in front of Barbara’s studio at the same moment.  The driver of the cab lifted one finger to his hat.  The legless man nodded, and peering into the cab recognized the handsome features of the sleeping doctor.  He smiled, and said to the driver: 

“Take him back to his house.”

The driver said:  “If I do he’ll enter a complaint.”

“No,” said the legless man; “you will tell him when he wakes that he gave you the order himself.  He won’t know whether he did or not.  So-long.”

The driver once more lifted one finger to his hat and obediently drove off.

It was very silent in McBurney Place; the double row of ancient stables made over into studio-buildings appeared deserted.  The legless man could not but flatter himself that his actions had been unobserved.  He chuckled, and with even more than his usual deft alacrity climbed the stairs to Barbara’s studio.

Meanwhile, however, a young man and a small boy, looking through the curtains of the latter’s bedroom window, had been witnesses of all that passed.

“That was Miss Barbara’s father in the taxi,” said Harry West.

“Looks like he’d been out all night,” said Bubbles.

“He may have been drugged.”

“Doubt it.  The taxi turned north at the corner.  If the ole ’un had had the doctor drugged o’ purpose he’d ‘a’ sent him south where he could use him.  I guess he’s sent him home.”

“He doesn’t want his morning with Miss Barbara interrupted.”