"You people have been angels to me," he interrupted me sharply. "I shall never forget it. Nor the lovely little girl. I'm going back to Montana to see how my ranch looks. I can't talk now. Not to anybody. For God's sake don't call anybody. But if I get straightened out again, ever, you'll hear from me. And if I don't——"
"But, Allan John," I protested. "Everybody will be desolated, your going off like this! Why, you're not even equipped in the simplest way! Not a single bit of baggage! Not a personal possession!"
Across the buzzing wires it seemed suddenly as though I could actually hear Allan John making one last really desperate effort to smile.
"I've got my little silver whistle," said Allan John. As though in confirmation of the fact he lifted the silver bauble to his lips and blew a single flutey note across the sixty miles.
"Goodbye!" he said.
Before I had fairly dropped the receiver back into its place, the May Girl was at my elbow. Her lovely childish eyes were strangely alert, her radiant head cocked ever so slightly to one side as though she held a shell to her listening ear. But there was no shell in her hand.
"What was that?" cried the May Girl. "I thought I heard Allan John's whistle!"
CHAPTER VI
WERE you ever in a theatre, right in the middle of a play, on the very verge of an act that you were really quite curious about, and just as the curtain started to go up it was suddenly yanked down again instead, and a woman behind the scenes screamed—oh, horridly, and a man came rushing out in front of the curtain waving his arms and trying to tell everybody something, but everybody all of a sudden was so busy screaming for himself that even God, I think, couldn't have made you hear just what the trouble was?
It isn't a pleasant thing to have happen.