"I—I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the doctor was adding further detail.
Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central. Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice.
"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road."
"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What—" but the receiver had clicked into place.
Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as chalk.
A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain.
In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it punishment—punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting—
He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his forehead.
The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait?
"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr. Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to be sure he's there."