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Page 105
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill
and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some
macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes."
Sid aggrievedly obeyed.
CHAPTER XXXII
ON FINLAKE MOUNTAIN
Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride
in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees.
Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the
chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor
and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours
he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside
him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He
drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more
care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep
him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a
road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once,
cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a
circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing.
The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety
trees.
At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights
blazed upon the quarry.
"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me."
"We leave the car here?"
"We'll have to." He turned his searchlight on the cliff ahead.
"There's a path yonder."
"And which shack, I wonder?"
"There's a light in only one."
Frank worked his stiffened face to relieve the feeling of cold
contorted rubber and followed Kenny up the path. Light glimmered dimly
through the jungle of frost upon the shack window. Fronded whitely by
the sleet, the panes loomed out of the dark like an incandescent series
of camera plates, bizarre and oriental. Frank shivered in the wind.
Doctor Cole opened the door. Beyond in the rude room of the shack a
lamp flared smokily.
"Brian?" said Kenny, his color gone.
"Why," said Doctor Cole, "his pulse is a lot stronger, Mr. O'Neill, and
he complains now of pain--"
"That means?"
"It means, Kenny," said Frank Barrington, "that he has passed on
normally to the stage of reaction." But his keen, intelligent eyes
sought Doctor Cole with a furtive lifting of his brows and asked a
question.
"Not a sign," said the little doctor gladly. "If anything he's a shade
too wide awake. And irritable. I've been setting his leg--"
Kenny wheeled fiercely.
"His leg!" he said. "His leg!"
"I'm sorry," stammered the doctor. "I--I quite forgot you didn't
know. . . . Broken between the knee and the hip," he added, turning to
Barrington. "I thought it merely paresis of the muscles until--"
"Where is he?" put in Kenny sharply. "What room?"
"There are only two rooms here," said Doctor Cole. "The stairway's
yonder."
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