She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to reach to the bed.

“If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you,” she suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone.

His smile was a mere grimace of torture.

“If you could stretch your good-will to—­to my mother—­that far,” he said.  “Please call my office—­number five-twenty-six G—­and ask for Mr. Norman.”

She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary.  “This is Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn.  Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to say—­what did you want to say?” she asked, turning to him.

“Just ask what’s going on; if it’s Norman you’ve got, he’ll know,” said Tom, sinking back on the pillows.

What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea’s color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and thoughtful as she listened.  When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to the sick man, her tone was kinder.

“There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father,” she said.  “The stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you may have, and—­”

She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a curious mask over the face of the man in the bed.  Through all the strain of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger.  But there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven.

“Tom!” she gasped, rising quickly to go to him.

“Wait,” he muttered; “let me pull myself together.  The papers—­are—­in—­”

He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and gave it to him.  It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the pillow and raised his head.  It was the nearness of her that revived him.

“I—­I’m weaker than a girl,” he whispered.  “Vince—­I mean the thug, hit me a lot harder than he needed to.  What was I saying?—­oh, yes; the papers.  Will you—­will you go over there in the corner by the door and look behind the mopboard?  You will find a piece of it sawed so it will come out.  In the wall behind it there ought to be a package.”

She found it readily,—­a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and a little charred at the corners.

“That’s it,” he said weakly.  “Now one more last favor; please send Aunt ’Phrony up as you go down.  Tell her I want my clothes.”

Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf.

“You are not going to get up?” she said.

“Yes, I must; I’m due this minute at that meeting down yonder.”

“Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!” she cried.  “What are you thinking of!”