With a good deal of help he managed to get to the little automatic elevator, and they put him to bed. While Lawrence put cold compresses on the bruised head, O’Brien telephoned for the police and placed a guard around the house. Then he summoned Mr. Ridgeway’s doctor, who examined the wound and assured them that there was no concussion. By the time all this was done, it was nearly three o’clock in the morning.
“Let’s to bed,” yawned O’Brien. “It’s coming home with you I am, Larry. I expect you’ll loan me the matter of some pajammies?”
“Sure!” said Lawrence. “But I don’t know how they will fit.”
“Fit, fit!” said O’Brien, hailing a passing taxi. “Fit? Sure, I could sleep this night in lead pajammies, any size whatever.”
True enough, O’Brien rolled into bed and was asleep in a moment, but Lawrence tossed restlessly a long time before he could quiet himself. He was worried about Mr. Ridgeway, and he wished O’Brien would wake up and tell him just what he feared from the spies or conspirators, or whatever they were. And he wondered about Mr. Ridgeway, and was sorry that he had no sons, and wished, poor Lawrence, that he was Mr. Ridgeway’s son. How proud he would be! But he knew that he would always be Lawrence Petit, the waif, with only a pictured face for a family.
O’Brien snored on gently and endlessly, and at last, lulled by the sound, Lawrence went to sleep. When he awoke, O’Brien was in the bathroom running a bath, and singing Sweet Rosy O’More in a mellow baritone. He sounded like a man who has not a care in the world.
Lawrence jumped up. It was eight o’clock. They had overslept an hour. But when he asked O’Brien how he had happened to sleep so late, that songful gentleman declared that there was nothing to do but enjoy themselves and he intended to go to a movie and sit through it twice, so he could think.
“Will you go along with me?” he asked.
“I would rather fly,” said Lawrence. “I wish I could get hold of a plane. I would feel better if I could get off the earth for a while. I can never think so well as when I am up a few hundred feet.”
“Go as high as you like,” said O’Brien. “Here, I will give you a bit of a paper, and just you go out to the field and give it to the man in charge there, and all that you will have to do after that is to pick which plane you want. You can’t use the dirigible because it is smashed up.”