"After you are there," he said, "if Bishop Ludlow will let you. Not now. You are almost out of my clutches, and I must tyrannize while I can."
A quick look passed from him to his assistant as he spoke, for the newspapers that afternoon had worn startling head-lines. The sordid affairs of a mining town across the ranges had little interest for Aniston, but the names of Stires and Moreau on the clicking wire had waked it, thus late, to the sensation. The professional caution of the tinker of human bodies wished, however, that no excitement should be added to the unavoidable fatigue of his patient's departure.
This fatigue was near to spelling defeat, after all, for the exertion brought again the dreadful, stabbing pain, and this time it carried Hugh into a region where feeling ceased, consciousness passed, and from which he struggled back finally to find the surgeon bending anxiously over him.
"I don't like that sinking spell," the latter confided to his assistant an hour later as they stood looking through the window after the receding carriage. "It was too pronounced. Yet he has complained of no pain. He will be in good hands at any rate." He tapped the glass musingly with his forefinger. "It's curious," he said after a pause; "I always liked Sanderson—in the pulpit. Somehow he doesn't appeal to me at close range."
The special car which the bishop had ready had been made a pleasant interior; fern-boxes were in the corners, a caged canary swung from a bracket, and a softly cushioned couch had been prepared for the sick man. A moment before the start, as it was being coupled to the rear of the resting train, while the bishop chatted with the conductor, a flustered messenger boy handed him a telegram. It read:
I arrive Aniston to-morrow five. Confidential. Must see you. Urgent. Jessica.
The bishop read it in some perplexity. It was the first word he had received from her since her marriage, but, aware of Hugh's forgery and disgrace, he had not wondered at this. Since the news of David Stires' death, he had looked for her return, for she was the old man's heir and mistress now of the white house in the aspens. But he realized that it would need all her courage to come back to this town whence she had fled with her trouble—to lay bare an unsuspected and shameful secret, to meet old friends, and answer questions that must be asked. The newspapers to-day pictured a still worse shame for her, in the position of the man who, in name still, was her husband—who had trod so swiftly the downward path from thievery to the worst of crimes. Could Jessica's coming have to do with that? He must see her, yet his departure could not now be delayed. He consulted with the conductor and the latter pored over his tablets.
As a result, his answering message flashed along the wires to Jessica's far-away train:
Sanderson injured. Taking him to coast train forty-eight due Twin Peaks two to-morrow afternoon.