BOOK IV
“BUT IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR ARIADNE”
CHAPTER XXXI
PROTECTION FROM THE MINOTAUR
Dr. Melton burst open the door of the house in the Black Rock woods, and running to the owner caught hold of his bared brown arm. “Paul Hollister is dead!” he cried.
“I read the papers,” said Rankin, looking down at him without stirring.
“The damn fool!” cried the doctor, his face working. “Just now! There’s another child expected.”
Rankin’s inscrutable gravity did not waver at this speech. He felt the hand that rested on his arm tremble, and he was thinking, as Judge Emery had so often thought, that perhaps one reason for the doctor’s success in treating women was a certain community of too-responsive nerves. “You can hardly blame a man because the date of his death is inconvenient,” he said reasonably. He drew up one of his deep chairs and pushed the doctor into it. “Sit down and get your breath. You look sick. How do you happen to be up so early? It’s hardly daylight.”