Leerie Part 11

"What did she say?"

"Nothing. But she looked very white and drawn. I'm afraid she hasn't slept much."

"Good Lord! you don't believe she really thinks Brainard will bungle!"

But Miss Maxwell cut him short. "This is no time to bother with futile suppositions. Please, Mr. Brooks! Remember that for all our sakes--Doctor Dempsy's most of all--this is the time to keep our nerve and think only one way." With a grave shake of the head she left him at the door of Doctor Dempsy's room.

To Peter the day crept on at a snail's pace; to Sheila it galloped. Peter saw her just once, when, at Doctor Dempsy's urgent wish, she came in for a moment between operations, m.u.f.fled to the eyes in her gown and mask.

"Come here, child." The old doctor held out a commanding hand and drew the nurse close to the bed. "I've had something on my mind ever since I saw your face this morning. Might as well say it now before I forget it." He smiled up gently at the great, deep-gray eyes looking down wistfully at him. "I imagine that you two youngsters may be fretting some over to-morrow--seven A.M. Hey? Mean trick to saddle you with the responsibility of an old, worn-out hulk like mine, with the chances fifty-fifty on patching it up. What I wanted to say was that you mustn't take it too hard if I don't patch. 'Pon my soul I sha'n't mind for myself."

A voice called from the corridor outside, "Miss O'Leary, Doctor Brainard's waiting."

Doctor Dempsy gave the hand inside the rubber glove a tight squeeze.

"Remember, Leerie, I know you'll keep the little old lantern burning for me as long as you can, and here's good luck, whatever happens."

She went without a word. Peter had become vastly absorbed at the window in watching Hennessy sweeping a gathering of leaves from the curb. When he finally came back to his chair by the bedside he flattered himself that his expression was beatifically cheerful and his voice perfectly steady.

As the day waned a storm gathered, and by nightfall the sanitarium and the surrounding country were in the grip of a full-fledged equinoctial. Doctor Dempsy was put to bed early, and Peter went back to his room in the main building to write himself into a state of temporary forgetfulness, if he could. He had tinkered with his pen, sharpened half a dozen pencils, and mussed up as many sheets of paper when a knock brought him to his feet.

Sheila O'Leary stood at the door. Her lips were bravely trying to smile away the haggard lines of the face.

Unconsciously Peter's arms went out to her as he repeated that old cry of his in the days when he was a sufferer in the Surgical, "Why--why, it's Leerie!" and his love seemed to pound through every syllable.

For the flash of a second the eyes of the girl leaped to his in answer, but in another flash they seemed to have traveled miles away, looking back at him with the sadness of a lost angel. "Yes, it's Leerie again--come for help," she announced, tersely.

"All right." Peter tried to sound matter-of-fact.

"Don't ask questions; just do it. Will you?"

Peter nodded.

"You said once if you had to, you could drive through any storm, snow, hail, or rain, that you had ever seen. Yes? Then get your car and take Doctor Brainard out to-night. Take him anywhere, and keep him going till he's so tired he's ready to drop. Talk to him, tell him stories, don't let him talk about himself--or to-morrow. And bring him home when you think he can sleep."

"Yes. What are you going to do?"

"Sleep, I hope." She turned to go, but came back again and laid a cold hand in Peter's. "Thank you. Don't think I don't appreciate it."

"Wait a minute. As it happens, I haven't met Doctor Brainard, and there's a perfectly good chance he may not care about joy-riding in a young hurricane--even in my company," Peter ended ironically.

Leerie gave a little hollow laugh. "Oh, he'll go--don't worry. I'll bring him down and introduce him. Ready in ten minutes?" And this time she was gone.

Peter knew if he lived to the ripe old age of Solomon himself he should never forget the smallest detail of that night--Doctor Brainard's curt, almost surly greeting, the plunge into the car, and the start. After that Peter felt like a mythological being piloting the elements. He headed for a state road, and for miles, neither of them speaking, the car streaked over what might have been the surface of the river of Lethe, or the strata of mist lying above Niflheim, for all the feeling of reality and substance it gave. He had the eery sensation that he might be forced to keep on and on till the end of the world, like the Flying Dutchman. He wondered what sin of his own or some one's else he might be expiating. They pa.s.sed no living or mechanical thing; they had the road, the night, the storm to themselves. They might have gone ten miles or thirty before Doctor Brainard broke the silence.

"Gad! but you can drive!"

"Thank you. Like it?"

"Not exactly. But it's better than thinking."

"Works the other way with me; this sets me thinking." A sudden, heavier gust sent the car skidding across the road, and Peter's attention went to his wheel. Righting it, he went on, "This is the second time in my life I've felt something controlling me that was stronger than my own will."

"Nasty feeling. Lucky man if you've only felt it twice. What was it the first time?"

"Fear. That's what brought me here."

Peter felt the eyes of the doctor studying him in the dark. "I heard about your case. It was Leerie brought you through, too, wasn't it?"

Quick as a flash Peter turned. For the instant he forgot they were speeding at a forbidden rate down slippery macadam in a tempest, with his hand as the only controlling force. He almost dropped his wheel. "Why '_too_'? Is she pulling you through something?"

He could hear a heavy intake of breath beside him. Unconsciously he knew that his companion was no longer sitting limp with relaxed muscles. He seemed to feel every nerve and fiber in the body of the surgeon growing tense, which made his careless, inconsequential tone sound the more strange when he finally spoke:

"That's an odd question to put to a doctor. I was referring to Leerie's cases. She's pulled through hundreds of patients, you know; she's famous for it."

"Yes, I know," answered Peter. His voice sounded just as careless, but the hands that gripped the wheel were as taut as steel.

They swept on for another half-hour, the silence broken by an occasional yawn from the surgeon. At last Peter slowed down and looked at his watch.

"Eleven-thirty. If we turn now we'll make the San about one. How's that for bedtime?"

"Gad! I'm ready now," and the doctor yawned again.

Peter timed it to a nicety. It was five minutes past one as he dropped Doctor Brainard at the Surgical, where he roomed. He was just driving off when Miss Jacobs hurried out of the entrance.

"Oh, Mr. Brooks, wait a minute, please. Doctor Dempsy isn't resting very well, and Miss Maxwell left word that if he called for you, you could sit with him. We can't get him to sleep, and he does want you."

"All right. I'll leave the car and come back."

As Peter took his chair again by his friend's bedside his face was set to as strong a purpose as Sheila O'Leary's had shown that day in the sanitarium grounds. "Want me to talk, old man?" he asked, quietly. "Maybe I can yarn you into forty winks. Shall I try?"

"Wish you would. It's funny how a man can go through this with a thousand or so patients and it seems like an every-day affair, but when it's himself--well, there's the rub." And the doctor smiled a bit sheepishly at his own ungovernable nerves.

Peter gripped his hand understandingly. "I know. It's the difference between fiction and autobiography as far as it touches your own sense of reality. Well, to-night shall we try fiction? Ever since they pulled me through here, I've had my mind on a yarn with a sanitarium or hospital for a background and a doctor for a hero. All this atmosphere gets into your blood. It keeps you guessing until you have to spin a yarn and use up the material."

"Anything for copy, hey?" the doctor chuckled.

"That's about it. Well, my yarn runs about this way." With the skill of an artist and the sympathy of a humanist--and the suppressed excitement of one who has something at stake--Peter drew his two princ.i.p.al characters, the conscientious, sensitive doctor possessed with the constant fear of that hypothetical case he might lose some day, and the smooth, scheming man a few years his senior who wanted to get his fellow-pract.i.tioner out of the way and marry the girl they both loved. Peter made the girl as adorable as a man in love might picture her.

"For a sixpence I'd wager you had fallen in love yourself." Doctor Dempsy chuckled again. "I never before knew you to be so keen over feminine charms."

"Just more copy," and Peter went on with the tale. "Well, the young chap's horror and fear kept growing with each new case, and the other chap kept sneering and suggesting that his nerves weren't fit, and his hand wasn't steady, and he worked too slowly. He kept it up until he got what he wanted; the young chap bungled his operation and lost his case."

"Poor devil! I know just what kind of torment he lived through." Doctor Dempsy raised himself on an elbow and shook his head at Peter. "A case like that may be fiction to you, but it's fact to us in the profession.

You have no idea how often a youngster's nerves fail him."

"Guess I'm getting the idea. But I need your help to finish the yarn. Of course the hospital couldn't bounce him for losing one case. They would have to prove first that he wasn't fit, wouldn't they?"

"They would have to make him out incompetent."

Peter nodded. Had there been more light in the room Doctor Dempsy might have been startled at the unprecedented expression of cunning that had crept into his friend's face. "I'm not up enough in medical matters to know what I could prove against the young chap to put him out. You'll have to help me. Just how could his rival oust him?"