“With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street,” said the crushed man; “but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is passing.”
He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of silence broken by groans.
“Wait! one thing more,” he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his arms. “I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson’s Kents, hard by; my name is Winter.” Then, after a pause, “I can pay for a private room at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!”
Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones (and broken bones) as he was.
The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he dared not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall. At last—it seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to the sufferer—the hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly, Barton opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear, deposited his burden on the pavement, and flew to the not distant police-station.
He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he had left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or two puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called up a cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there were riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky penny-a-liner with his “tissue” and pencil.
Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected, that his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of the case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last, returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
“By Jove!” he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken at breakfast, “I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a Flying-Machine!”