Red Pepper's Patients / With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular

by Grace S. Richmond

"Had about enough?" Burns inquired as he returned to the car for the eighth time. "Shall I take you home?"

"I'm all right."

Burns gave him a sharp glance. "To be sure you are. But we'll go home nevertheless. The rest of my work is at the hospital anyhow."

As they were approaching the long stretch of straight road to which King had looked forward an hour ago, but which he was disgusted to find himself actually rather dreading now, a great closed car of luxurious type, and bearing upon its top considerable travelling luggage, slowed down as it neared, and a liveried chauffeur held up a detaining hand. Burns stopped to answer a series of questions as to the best route toward a neighbouring city. There were matters of road mending and detours to be made plain to the inquirers, so the detention occupied a full five minutes, during which the chauffeur got down and came to Burns's side with a road map, with which the two wrestled after the fashion usually made necessary by such aids to travel.

During this period Jordan King underwent a disturbing experience. Looking up with his usual keen glance, one trained to observe whatever might be before it, he took in at a sweep the nature of the party in the big car. That it was a rich man's car, and that its occupants were those who naturally belonged in it, there was no question. From the owner himself, an aristocrat who looked the part, as not all aristocrats do, to those who were presumably his wife, his son, and daughters, all were of the same type. Simply dressed as if for a long journey, they yet diffused that aroma of luxury which cannot be concealed.

The presumable son, a tall, hawk-nosed young man who sat beside the chauffeur, turned to speak to those inside, and King's glance followed his. He thus caught sight of a profile next the open window and close by him. He stared at it, his heart suddenly standing still. Who was this girl with the bronze-red hair, the perfect outline of nose and mouth and chin, the sea-shell colouring? Even as he stared she turned her head, and her eyes looked straight into his.

He had seen Miss Anne Linton only twice, and on the two occasions she had seemed to him like two entirely different girls. But this girl—was she not that one who had come to visit him in his room at the hospital, full of returning health and therefore of waxing beauty and vigour?

For one instant he was sure it was she, no matter how strange it was that she should be here, in this rich man's car—unless—But he had no time to think it out before he was overwhelmed by the indubitable evidence that, whoever this girl was, she did not know him. Her eyes—apparently the same wonderful eyes which he could now never forget—looked into his without a sign of recognition, and her colour—the colour of radiantly blooming youth—did not change perceptibly under his gaze. And after that one glance, in which she seemed to survey him closely, after the manner of girls, as if he were an interesting specimen, her eyes travelled to Red Pepper Burns and rested lightly on him, as if he, too, were a person of but passing significance to the motor traveller looking for diversion after many dusty miles of more or less monotonous sights.

King continued to gaze at her with a steadiness somewhat indefensible except as one considers that all motorists, meeting on the highway, are accustomed to take note of one another as comrades of the road. He was not conscious that the other young people in the car also regarded him with eyes of interest, and if he had he would not have realized just why. His handsome, alert face, its outlines slightly sharpened by his late experiences, his well-dressed, stalwart figure, carried no hint of the odious plaster jacket which to his own thinking put him outside the pale of interest for any one.

But it could not be Anne Linton; of course it could not! What should a poor little book agent be doing here in a rich man's car—unless she were in his employ? And somehow the fact that this girl was not in any man's employ was established by the manner in which the young man on the front seat spoke to her, as he now did, plainly heard by King. Though all he said was some laughing, more or less witty thing about this being the nineteenth time, by actual count since breakfast, that a question of roads and routes had arisen, he spoke as to an equal in social status, and also—this was plainer yet—as to one on whom he had a more than ordinary claim. And King listened for her answer—surely he would know her voice if she spoke? One may distrust the evidence of one's eyes when it comes to a matter of identity, but one's ears are not to be deceived.