Jerry’s teeth shut down on each other. “I’ll tell you the whole darn tale to-morrow. To-day you’d go to sleep in the middle of it.” She pulled down the blinds and in the darkness of the room, Joy fell into a thick, dreamless space from which she brought herself up with a start. It was morning; chinks of glory were pouring in through the blinds; and all at once she felt hungry and almost vigorous. Jerry was asleep on the chair by the foot of the bed, but as Joy stirred, her eyes popped open and she bounced up.
“What ho!” she exclaimed, dashing for the door. “You have the look of a real breakfast in your eye!”
Joy did not talk much until the “real breakfast” was downed. Then she leaned back on her pillows expectantly. “Now, Jerry—please tell me—everything that happened. I gather from investigation that none of my bones are broken—but what did happen to me? How did I get back here? And what happened to Packy?”
Jerry pulled out her cigarette case. “Mind if I have at it? The doc would kill me for doing this here, but I’m so fuzzy since this happened——Packy, allow me to snort, got off nobly with a bump on the eye. The nasty little garter snake! You see, Joy, Jim Dalton and I were pursuing you in a taxi at ten dollars per sneeze, all the way.”
“Jim Dalton!”
“Right. He horned in on the craps, and by the way, after a round or two he began taking away everybody’s cash, so the taxi bill might not have made him as sad as it would have made me—and pretty soon Sal and Wigs and the gang faded off down town to get a club sandwich, but I stuck around and so did this Dalton bird. He had never played about with me at all, so I took a somersault when he began to mention you in an offhand way. Said he had seen you a couple of onces, and wanted to again sometime.”
“I told him I was too busy to see him,” Joy interpolated, trying to struggle to a sitting posture. Jerry raised a restraining hand.
“Take it from one who has flown about on the four winds, Joy—he’s all right. He played a hunch to come up that night, and he might have saved your life for all you know.”
Joy fell back on the pillows. “Oh, all right—but go on.”
Jerry smiled. “Don’t interrupt and I’ll spill it fast——Just at that moment dear little Packy blew in on one of the stiffest breaths I’ve come near since the first of July. Wanted to know where you were, why you weren’t there, etcetera, and I told him to go to and stay put. He paced out banging the door in good old ten-twenty-thirty style, and Dalton passed the remark that he’d seen the angel messing around you before and didn’t like the way he parted his hair. I took a glim out of the window with some small idea of drowning Packy’s pretty car with a bucket of varnish there happened to be handy, when you breezed up and stood talking to him with all the life in the world. I knew there was a nice speedy wind out which would muffle Packy’s breath, so I hove up the window and bade you come in out of the wet. But no—you would go a-riding, and I was all for letting you go, but Dalton got a taxi while I was still bandying words with you, and told me to put on my old grey bonnet and trot along with him. I trotted!” She took a long breath. “God, Joy, that was a ride! I had netted the info that you were going out on the Shore Road, but there was always the chance you’d change your minds, and we had one whirl getting you into view! Some joy-ride—cheery for me no end—with Dalton bickering along with himself to the effect that he wouldn’t let that fellow take you out alone with as enthusiastic a breath as he was exhibiting—my only recreation was making up five different stories which I told the taxi-boy, about the car we were streaking after—which made him put on all speed and sizzle along, anyhow.”