She suddenly began to tremble. Would the doctors let her see him? What excuse could she give? If he was the man who had been in Hugh's cabin that night, he had heard her speak, had known she was there. He must not know beforehand of her coming, lest he have suspicion of her errand. Bishop Ludlow—he could gain her access to him. Injured, dying perhaps, maybe he did not guess that Hugh was in jeopardy for his crime. Guilty and dying, if he knew this, he would surely tell the truth. But if he died before she could reach him? The paper was some days old; he might be dead already. She took heart, however, from the statement of his improved condition.
She sprang to her feet and looked at her chatelaine watch. The east-bound express was overdue. There was no time to lose—minutes might count. She examined her purse—she had money enough with her.
Five minutes later she was at the station, a scribbled note was on its way to Mrs. Halloran, and before a swinging red lantern, the long incoming train was shuddering to a stop.
CHAPTER XLIV THE IMPOSTOR
In the long hospital the air was cool and filtered, drab figures passed with soft footfalls and voices were measured and hushed. But no sense of coolness or repose had come to the man whose racked body had been tenderly borne there in the snowy dawn which saw the blackened ruins of Aniston's most perfect edifice.
Because of him tongues clacked on the street corner and bulletins were posted in newspaper windows; carriages of tasteful equipment halted at the hospital porte-cochère, messages flew back and forth, and the telephone in the outer office whirred busily at unseasonable hours; but from the clean screened room where he lay, all this was shut out. Only the surgeons came and went, deftly refreshing the bandages which swathed one side of his face, where the disfiguring flame had smitten—the other side was untouched, save for a line across the brow, seemingly a thin, red mark of excoriation.
Hugh had sunk into unconsciousness with the awestruck exclamation ringing in his ears: "Good God! It's Harry Sanderson!" He had drifted back to conscious knowledge with the same words racing in his brain. They implied that, so far as capture went, the old, curious resemblance would stand his friend till he betrayed himself, or till the existence of the real Harry Sanderson at Smoky Mountain did so for him. The delusion must hold till he could have himself moved to some place where his secret would be safer—till he could get away!