"In any event, he is still waiting there for us, wet or dry. He and the two big Schmicks." I took a moment for thought. "We must telephone to the castle and have Hawkes send Conrad out with word to them." I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past seven. "I suppose no one in the castle went to bed last night. Good Lord, what a scene for a farce!"
We retraced our steps to the garage, where Britton went to the telephone. I stood in the doorway of the building, staring gloomily, hollow-eyed at the—well, at nothing, now that I stop to think of it. The manager of the place, an amiable, jocund descendant of Lazarus, approached me.
"Quite a storm last night, Mr. Schmarck," he said, rubbing his hands on an oil-rag. I gruffly agreed with him in a monosyllable. "But it is lovely to-day, sir. Heavenly, sir."
"Heavenly?" I gasped.
"Ah, but look at the glorious sun," he cried, waving the oil-rag in all directions at once.
The sun! Upon my word, the sun was shining fiercely. I hadn't noticed it before. The tops of the little red-tiled houses down the street glistened in the glare of sunshine that met my gaze as I looked up at them. Suddenly I remembered that I had witnessed the sunrise, a most doleful, dreary phenomenon that overtook us ten miles down the valley. I had seen it but it had made no impression on my tortured mind. The great god of day had sprung up out of the earth to smile upon me—or at me—and I had let him go unnoticed, so black and desolate was the memory of the night he destroyed! I had only a vague recollection of the dawn. The thing that caused me the most concern was the discovery that we had run the last half of our journey in broad daylight with our acetylene lamps going full blast. I stared at the tiles, blinking and unbelieving.
"Well, I'm—dashed," I said, with a silly grin.
"The moon will shine to-night, Mr. Schmarck—" he began insinuatingly.
"Smart, if you please," I snapped.
"Ah," he sighed, rolling his eyes, "it is fine to be in love."