I sounded my horn impatiently. After an interval, a slow-footed car washer inside the garage began trundling the doors back to admit me. I ran to him.
No. Bob, he left at six, same as usual. He hadn't been round since. . . . His kid, eh? Mebbe the heat had turned her queer. Nuff to addle most folks, the heat was. . . .
I saw that he knew nothing, and snapped him off with a sharp request to crank the car for me. As he did so, I jumped in beside Susan.
"Where do you live, Susan? Oh, yes, of course—Birch Street. Bob told me that. . . . Eh? You don't want to go home?"
"Never, please. Never, never! I won't!" Proclaiming this, she flung Bob's dinner pail from her and it bounced and clattered down the asphalt. "It's too late," she added, in a frightened whisper: "I know it is!"
Then she seized my arm—thereby almost wrecking us against a fire hydrant—and clung to me, sobbing. I was puzzled and—yes—alarmed. Bob was a bad customer. The child's bruised face . . . something she had said about a razor——? And instantly I made up my mind.
"I'll take you to my house, Susan. Mrs. Parrot"—Mrs. Parrot was my housekeeper—"will fix you up for to-night. Then I'll go round and see Bob; see what's wrong." I felt her thin fingers dig into my arm convulsively. "Yes," I reassured her, taking a corner perilously at full speed, "that will be much better. You'll like Mrs. Parrot."
Rather recklessly, I hoped this might prove to be true; for Mrs. Parrot was a little difficult at times. . . .
It was Maltby Phar who saw me coming up the steps with a limp child in my arms, and who opened the screen door for me. "Aha!" he exclaimed. "Done it this time, eh! Always knew you would, sooner or later. You're too damned absent-minded to drive a car. You——"
"Nonsense!" I struck in. "Tell Mrs. Parrot to ring up Doctor Stevens. Then send her to me." And I continued on upstairs with Susan.