Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal.

“Frank?” Hot relief surged in Kenny’s heart at the chance ease of connection.  “Kenny speaking.”

“Hello, Kenny.  Nothing doing for me tonight, old man.  I’ve got to sleep.”

“I need you, Frank.  Brian has been injured—­badly—­in a quarry explosion.”

“Kenny!”

“A chance of skull fracture,” said Kenny steadily.  “That means?”

“A possible operation.”

“Can you leave with me at eleven o’clock to-night, Pennsylvania
Terminal?  It will mean at least two days.  He’s at Finlake,
Pennsylvania, barely conscious—­in the hands of a country doctor.”

The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and whistled.  He worked and played at heavy pressure.

“Kenny, old man,” he said, “nothing is impossible.  Almost this is.  But it’s you and Brian and that’s enough, I’ll meet you at quarter of eleven.  I’ll go—­thoroughly prepared.  Do you feel like telling me more?”

“No.”

Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip dangerously.

Eleven o’clock. . . .  How could he wait?  He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic.  With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional.  He went shaking to Brian’s room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket.  Thank God the studio was in order, save a chair or two.  Brian . . . would . . . be . . . pleased.  Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked.  An augury?  God forbid!  Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous collection of receipted I.O.U.’s into his bulging suit case and called up Simon Meyer.

“Simon,” he said, “whatever I happen to have there—­there’s a shotgun, I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. . . .  The rest for the moment I can’t recall. . . .  I want you to put all of it in a bundle and send it here at once by special messenger.  I have the tickets here. . . .  I’ll have them ready. . . .  Yes, I’ll give him a check. . . .  No, Simon, it won’t be certified and he’ll take it as it is.”

He rang off and searched impatiently for pawn tickets.  Simon’s messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the contents of the bundle and wrote a check.

Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead to eleven o’clock.  It seemed to him then that he could not possibly wait and go on fighting for his self-control.  A gust of sleet and hail swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor.  Its cold, stinging contact with his face refreshed him.  Kenny’s brain cleared.  He gulped and gasped.  Garry’s car!  He would not wait.

“Frank,” he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for Garry, “if you’re willing we’ll motor to Finlake in Garry’s car.  He’ll not be mindin’.  I borrow it often.  It’s a bad night of course—­but we could start now.  And we can make time on the road.  It’s barely two hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make unendurable delay.  Shall I come for you in half an hour?”