“Winifred,” said R. P. Burns, invading Mrs. Arthur Chester's sunny
living-room one crisp October morning, leather cap in hand, “I'm going
to give a dinner to-night. Stag dinner for Grant, of Edinburgh--man who
taught me half the most efficient surgery I know. He's over here, and
I've just found it out. Only been in the city two days: goes to-morrow.”
“How interesting, Red! Where do you give it? At one of the clubs or
hotels in town?”
“That's the usual thing, of course. That's why I'm not going to do it.
Grant's a rugged sort of commonsense chap--hates show and fuss. He gets
an overpowering lot of being 'entertained' in precisely the conventional
style. He's a pretty big gun now, and he can't escape. When I told him
I was going to have him out for a plain dinner at home he looked as
relieved as if I'd offered him a reprieve for some sentence.”
“Undoubtedly he'll enjoy the relaxation. But you'll have a caterer out
from town, I suppose?”
“Not on your life. Cynthia can cook well enough for me, and I know
Ronald Grant's tastes like a book. But what I want to ask is that
you and Martha Macauley will come over and see that the table looks
shipshape. Cynthia's a captain of the kitchen, but her ideas of table
decoration are a trifle too original even for me. Miss Mathewson's away
on her vacation. I'll send in some flowers. My silver and china are
nothing remarkable, bur as long as the food's right that doesn't
matter.”
“I shall be delighted to do it for you, Red, as you know. So will
Martha. We--”
“Thanks immensely. I want Ches of course, and Jim Macauley's coming. The
rest are M, D.'s. I must be off.”
He would have been off, without doubt, in an instant more, for he was
half out of the door as he spoke, but Winifred Chester flew after him
and laid an insistent hand on his coat sleeve.
“Red! You must stop long enough to tell me something about it. How can I
help you unless I know your plans? What hour have you set? How many
are coming, and who? How many courses are you going to have? Have you
engaged a waitress?”
Red Pepper looked bewildered. “Is there all that to it?” he inquired
helplessly. “How in thunder--I beg your pardon--how do I know how many
courses there'll be? Ask Cynthia that. The hour's seven-thirty; can't
get around earlier, even if I wanted to be less formal. There's Van Horn
and Buller and Fields and Grayson and Grant and Ches and Jim and--and
myself. I may have asked somebody else, seems as if did but I can't
remember. You'd better put on an extra plate in case I have.”
He was starting off again, but Winifred, laughing helplessly, again
detained him. “Red, you're too absurd! What about the waitress? Shall I
find one for you?”
“I supposed Cynthia could serve us; she always does me.”
“She can't to-night, and prepare things to send in, too.”
“Oh, well, see to it if you'll be so kind; only let me go, for I've only
fifteen minutes now to meet a consultant ten miles away. Good-bye, Win.”
He took time to turn and smile at her, and for the sake of the
smile--she knew of none other just like it--she forgave him for
involving her in the labours she already clearly foresaw were to be
hers. How precisely like Red Pepper Burns it was to plan for a “stag”
dinner in this inconsequent way! If it had been a coming operation, now,
no detail of preparation would have been too insignificant to command
his attention. But in the present instance unquestionably all he had
done was to appear at the door of the kitchen and casually inform
Cynthia that eight or nine men were coming to dinner to-night, and
he'd trust her to see that they should have something good to eat. Poor
Cynthia!
Winifred ran over to consult Martha Macauley and together they braved
Burns's housekeeper in her kitchen. The result was relief, as far as
the dinner itself was concerned. Cynthia was a superior cook, and long
experience with exclusively masculine tastes had taught her the sort of
thing which, however out of the beaten line for entertaining, was likely
to prove successful in pleasing “eight or nine men,” wherever they might
hail from.
“Cynthia's planned a dinner that will be about as different from
Lazier's concoctions as could be imagined,” Winifred said to Martha,
“but it will taste what Ches calls 'licking good.' Now for the table.
I'm afraid Red's china and linen are none too fine. We'll have to help
him out there.”
They helped him out. Only the finest of Martha's linen and silver, the
thinnest of Winifred's plates and cups and the most precious of her
glass would content them. When the table was set in the low-ceiled,
casement-windowed old dining-room where Red Pepper was accustomed to
bolt his meals alone when he took time for them at all, it was a
table to suggest arrogantly the hand of woman, Winifred eyed it with
milled satisfaction and concern.
“It looks lovely, Martha, but not a bit bachelor-like. Do you suppose
he'll mind?”
“Not as long as the food is right; and judging by the heavenly smells
from the kitchen there's no fear for that. But it's five o'clock,
and the flowers he promised you haven't come. Do you suppose he's
forgotten?”
“Of course he has. If he remembers the dinner itself it'll be all we can
expect of him. It doesn't matter. There are heaps of pink and crimson
asters yet in the garden, and some fall anemones. We'll arrange them,
and then if his flowers do come we'll change. But they won't.”
They didn't. But the pink and crimson asters furnished a centrepiece
decidedly more in keeping, somehow, with a men's dinner than roses
would have been, and the decorators were content with them. Dora, Mrs.
Macauley's own serving maid, who was to take the part of the waitress
Red Pepper had not thought necessary, said they looked “awful tasty
now.”
“It's after seven and Red hasn't come yet.” Winifred Chester rushed at
Arthur, dressing placidly. “Jim went in for the men with his car, and
said he'd surely have them here by seven-twenty. You'll have to go over
and do the honours for him till he comes. He'll have to dress after he
gets here.”
“He won't stop to dress--not if he's late,” predicted Chester,
obediently hastening. “He'll rush in at the last minute, smelling
horribly of antiseptics, and set everybody laughing with some story.
They won't care what he wears. It's always a case of 'where MacGregor
sits, there's the head of the table,' you know, with Red. I certainly
hope nothing will make him late. I'm not up to playing host to a lot of
physicians and surgeons. I should feel as if I were about to be operated
on.”
“Nonsense, dear, there's no jollier company when they're off duty. But
Red isn't here yet, and I'm sure I hear Jim's Gabriel down the road. Do
hurry!”
Chester ran across the back lawn and in through Burns's kitchen,
startling Cynthia so that she nearly dropped the salt-box into a sauce
she was making for the beefsteak. He reached the little front porch just
in time to welcome the batch of professional gentlemen who came talking
and laughing up the path together.
“Doctor Burns has been detained, but I'm sure he'll be here soon,”
Chester explained, shaking hands, and discovering for himself which was
the famous Scottish surgeon by the “rugged commonsense” look of the man,
quite as R. P. Burns had characterized him.
Seven-thirty--no Red Pepper. Seven-forty-five--eight o'clock--still no
sign of him; harder to be explained, no sign from him. Why didn't he
telephone or send a telegram or a messenger? Waiting longer would not
do; Cynthia, in the kitchen, was becoming unnervingly agitated.
The dinner was served. Chester, at one end of the table, Macauley at the
other, both feeling a terrible responsibility upon them, did their best.
There had turned out to be two extra guests instead of the one whom
Burns had thought he might have asked but couldn't be sure; and Winifred
had had a bad ten minutes looking out a full set of everything with
which to set his place. For Red Pepper's place must certainly be left
unfilled; it would be beyond the possibilities that the dinner should
end without him.
“I believe he has forgotten,” whispered Martha to Winifred in the
office, from whose dim shadows they were surreptitiously peering into
the dining room to make sure that everything was going properly.
“Oh, he couldn't, not with the Edinburgh man here. He's often told us
about Doctor Grant and how much he owes him. He does look splendid and
capable, doesn't he--for all he's so burly and homely? And the other
men all feel honoured to be here with him; even Doctor Van Horn, who's
always so impressed with himself.”
“They seem to be having a good time. And they're eating as if they never
saw food before. It's a success--as much as it can be without the host
himself. Oh, why doesn't Red come?”
“He wouldn't desert a patient in a crisis for a dozen dinners.”
“No, but he'd send word.”
“Look at Arthur. He's hobnobbing with Doctor Grant as if he'd always
known him.”
“Jim is having a bad time with Doctor Van Horn. I can see it in his eye.
Mercy! one of them looked this way. I'm afraid he saw me. Come!”
The next time they reconnoitred, the dinner was working toward its end.
It was time, for it was nearly ten o'clock, and Cynthia's courses though
not many, had been mighty. Presently the table had been cleared, and
the men were drinking coffee and lighting the excellent cigars which had
been Macauley's thought when he found that Red Pepper was not on hand to
provide them himself.
Under the influence of these genial stimulants--Burns never offered any
others, and one man who knew it had declined to come--the sociability
grew more positive. Chester relaxed his legs under the table, feeling
that at last Red's guests could take care of themselves. Grayson proved
an accomplished story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable
adventures; even Ronald Grant, who had seemed a trifle taciturn, related
an extraordinary experience of another man. The Scottish surgeon had the
reputation of never talking about himself.
The smoke grew thick. Macauley's cigars were of a strong brand; the
air was blue with their reek. Still the guests sat about the table, and
still the talk went on.
It was interrupted quite suddenly by the advent of Red Pepper Burns
himself. Macauley saw him first, standing in the doorway between dining
room and office, but for an instant he did not know him. Macauley's
startled look caught Chester's attention; he sprang to his feet. At the
same moment the Scottish surgeon, following Chester's eyes, observed the
figure in the door. He was first to reach it.
“What's happened ye, lad?” he asked, and acted without waiting for an
answer. He threw a powerful arm about Burns's shoulders and led him,
reeling, back into the office where the air was purer.
They crowded round, doctors though they were and had many times sharply
ordered other people not to crowd. They could see at a glance that Burns
was very faint, that his right arm hung helpless at his side, that his
forehead wore a blackening bruise, and that his clothes were torn and
covered with dirt. For the rest they had to wait.
Grant took charge of his friend--the pupil whom he had never forgotten.
The arm was badly broken, too badly to be set without an anaesthetic. In
the inner office Van Horn, his dress coat off, gave the chloroform
while the Scotchman set the arm; and the American surgeons, no longer
crowding, but standing off respectfully as if at a clinic, looked on
critically. It was rapid and deft work, they admitted, especially since
the surgeon was using another man's splints, and the patient proved to
be one of the subjects who fight the anesthetic from beginning to end.
Chester, white-faced but plucky, stuck it out, but Macauley fled to
the outer air. Seeing a familiar long, dark form half on, half off the
driveway, he hurried toward it. A minute later he had all the unoccupied
guests around him on the lawn, and one of the Green Imp's lamps was
turned upon its crippled shape.
“By George, he's had a bad accident,” one and another of them said
as they examined the car's injuries. The hood was jammed until they
wondered why the engine was not disabled; the left running-board was
nearly torn off and the fender a shapeless wreck. The green paint was
scraped and splintered along the left side.
“He must have come home by himself. How far, do you suppose?”
“Not far, driving with his left hand, and faint.”
“He probably wasn't faint till he struck the indoor heat and the tobacco
smoke.”
“He's come at least five miles. Look at that red clay on her sides.
There's no red clay like that around here except in one place--at
the old mill on the Red Bank road.” Chester demonstrated his
theory excitedly. “I ought to know, I've ridden with him on every
out-of-the-way by-path in the county, first and last. There's a fright
of a hill just there.”
“Five miles with that arm? Gee!” This was Buller.
“Plucky,” was Grayson's comment, and there was a general agreement among
the men standing round.
Macauley put his shoulder to the Imp. “Let's push her in, fellows,” he
proposed. He had forgotten that they were medical gentlemen of position.
“I don't seem to want to drive her just now,” he explained.
They pushed the Imp to the red barn and shut it in with its injuries.
Then they went back to the house, where presently Burns came out from
under his anaesthetic and lay looking at his guests from under the
bandage which swathed his head.
“I'm mighty sorry to have broken up the fun this way, gentlemen,” he
said with a pale sort of smile. “Grayson was telling a story when I
butted in, I think. Finish it, will you, Grayson?”
“Not much. Yours is the story we want now, if you're up to telling it.
What happened out there on the Red Bank road?”
Burns scanned him. “How do you know what road?”
“Your friend Mr. Chester's detective instincts. He says there's no other
red clay like that that plasters your car. By the way, that's a fast
machine of yours. Did you lose control on the hill?”
“That's it,” acknowledged Burns simply. “I lost control.”
Chester was staring at him. It was not in the nature of reason to
suppose that Red Pepper had lost control of that car unless something
else had happened first. The steering gear of the Imp was certainly in
perfect condition; Macauley had said so. He wondered if Red meant that
he had lost his temper. But what could make him lose his temper--on Red
Bank hill?
They questioned him closely, all of them in turn. But that was all he
would say. He had lost control of the car. One or two of the men who
knew Burns least looked as if they could tell what was the probable
cause of such loss of control. Chester wanted to knock them down as
he fancied he recognized this attitude of mind. And at last they
went away--which was certainly the best thing they could do in the
circumstances.
All but Ronald Grant. The Scottish surgeon accepted without hesitation
Burns's suggestion that Doctor Grant should stay and keep him company
for an hour or two while he got used to his arm, and should then sleep
under his roof. So they settled down, Burns on his couch, Grant in an
armchair. When Chester left he was thinking that, except for the outward
signs of his adventure, Burns did not look as unfit as might have been
expected for a happy hour with an old friend.
Just outside the house Chester himself had an adventure. He was quite
alone, and he almost ran into a slim figure on the walk. The lights from
the office shone out into the October night, and Chester could see at a
glance who the girl was, even if the gleam of golden hair which all
the town knew had not told him. She was panting and her hand was on her
side.
“Did Doctor Burns get home all right?” she cried under her breath.
“What do you know about Doctor Burns?” was Chester's quick reply. He was
startled by the girl's appearance here at this hour.
“It doesn't make any difference what I know. Tell me if he got home. Was
he much hurt? Why shouldn't you tell me that, Mr. Chester?”
“He is home and all right. Do you want him professionally? He can't go
out to-night.”
“I know he can't. But I had to know he got home. I--”
She sank down on the doorstep, shaken and sobbing. Chester stood looking
down at het, wondering what on earth he was to say. What had Rose Seeley
to do with Red? What had she to do with his losing control on the Red
Bank hill? A quick thought crossed his mind, to be as quickly dismissed.
No, whatever Red's private affairs were, they could have nothing to do
with this Rose--too bruised and trampled a rose to take the fancy of a
man like him even in his most evil hour.
Suddenly she lifted her head. “He saved my life and 'most lost his.
They'd been making repairs on the hill and, some way, the lanterns
wasn't lit. It's an awful dark night. He saw what he was comin' to and
turned out sudden into the grass. He had to go into the ditch, then, not
to run over me--and somebody else. He ran away!” Plainly that scornful
accent did not mean Burns. “I didn't. I helped him get the car up. I
got his engine goin' for him; he showed me how. His arm was broke. There
ain't no house for a mile out there. I hated to see him try to come
home alone. I've walked all the way--run some of it--to make sure he got
here.”
“He got here,” murmured Chester, thinking to himself that this was the
queerest story he'd over heard, but confident he would never have any
better version of it and pretty sure that it was the true one.
“I suppose I'm a crazy fool to tell you, Mr. Chester,” said the girl
thickly. “But you're a gentleman. You won't tell. No more will he. He
didn't tell you how it happened, did he?”
She did not ask the question. She made the assertion, looking to him for
confirmation. Chester gave it. “No, he didn't tell,” he said gravely.
When she had gone he crossed the lawn to his own home, musing. “For a
'plain, quiet dinner,'” said he, quoting a phrase of Burns's used
when he gave Chester the invitation, “I think Red's has been about as
spectacular as they make 'em. Bully old boys.”