She repeated the message aloud, firmly, confidently, as she slowly wrote:
"I have good news. You will recover your hearing, speech, and sight completely. We have a miracle man here who will make you whole again, just the same that you were before except for a few little scars that will go away. You must just want to get well, in order to give the miracle man his chance and for the sake of your father and mother and those who love you." And after the last word she hesitated, then wrote the letter "H."
Each letter surging along those sensitive nerves, and letters slowly spelling words. She could look at the monstrous sight that he was, at that gaping wound, and ask this of him! She wanted him to live! So be it. He would not try to slip. The miracle man should have his chance. It was between the hammers on one side and her and the miracle man on the other.
"Wonderful! I admire your courage in saying it!" Dr. Smythe remarked thickly.
"But it will and must come true!" said Helen sturdily, as she rose to her feet and looked straight into his eyes, her own aflame with resolution. "No one must even think the contrary."
Another person had overheard the message written on Phil's arm as he looked around the corner of the screen. Lean he was and angularly built. His hair was brick-red, his face freckled, his age about thirty-five, and he had a smiling turn to the corners of his mouth. He had come down the aisle with a noiseless step, as if propelled by inexhaustible nervous vitality, and he had the air of a man with distinctly eccentric qualities, who would never stop on a street corner to ask anybody to tell him how to do his work. No second glance would be required to see that he was American—"corn-fed and from Kansas," to use his own words.
"Well, picture girl, you seem to have put it up to me!" he said cheerily. "You've made a lot of promises in my name; but that's just the kind of talk that helps."
Bricktop examined the wound, while Helen studied his features; but she could tell nothing by them. She knew that there were cases which he refused to undertake, and nothing could change his mind. Too many "possible" cases came back from the front behind the green curtains for him to waste time on the "impossible."
"Remember he is an American!" she whispered.
"So? What part?"