“Don’t you understand?” cried Caine, gripping the dazed, limp giant by the shoulder and trying to shake him back to his senses. “Don’t you understand the Steeloid fight will be on in an hour or so? You can’t desert us and run off to Granite like this.”
“Take your hands off me,” mumbled Conover, pettishly. “Lord, how I hate to be pawed! Can’t that driver go any faster’n a hearse? I’ll miss the—”
“Conover!” fairly shouted Caine. “Brace up, man! What ails you? I never saw you like this. Have you lost your head? The Steeloid fight comes up, in the Assembly, to-day. Your fortune and mine hang on your killing the Starke bill. You say, yourself, that unless you’re at the State House we’ll lose. You can’t get to Granite and back before the session closes. If—”
“I’m not comin’ back,” said Caleb in utter weariness. “She’s—Dey’s sick. ‘Dangerously ill,’ the tel’gram said. An’ she’s callin’ all the time for me. If the 9.32 is on time I ought to be to her house by noon. Maybe before.”
“Look here, old man!” pleaded Caine. “Of course I’m sorrier about Miss Shevlin than I can say. But she will have the best possible medical care. And you can’t help her by rushing off like this. Think of all that depends on your being at the State House, to-day. You can catch the six o’clock train for Granite this evening, just as well. For all our sakes, don’t desert us now! If Blacarda gets the Starke bill through the Assembly—”
“Don’t bother me,” snarled Conover, shifting his big body to move out of reach of the appealing hand. “What—what d’ye s’pose can be the matter with her? She was all right yesterday noon. Train leaves in four minutes, an’—”
Caine broke in on the Fighter’s speech with a final plea for sanity. He had an almost uncanny feeling at his own proximity to this demoralized hulk of what had until now been the strongest man of his world. He did not know the shaking, muttering, putty-faced being who in a trice had tossed away both their hopes of fortune. Yet Caine would not yield.
“If you’ll only stay just long enough for the Starke bill to be voted on,” he implored. “You can have a Special to take you back. Or, call up her doctor on the long-distance telephone before you start, and find out if her illness is really dangerous. Perhaps her aunt—”
“She’s callin’ for me,” reiterated Caleb, in the same dead tones. “I thought about the long-distance ’phone. But there’s no time for that before the 9.32 starts. I—Good! Here’s the station! An’ two minutes to spare.”
Out of the carriage he jumped and made off at a shambling run for the tracks; Caine close at his heels. At the car platform the Fighter turned; scribbled a few lines on a card and handed it to Caine.