At length she found courage to adjust the chain-bolt and open the door to the limit permitted by that guard.
In the outer hallway a gas-jet burned, turned low, diffusing just enough illumination to show her the figure, somehow indefinitely familiar in spite of its style, of a man in a chauffeur's uniform: a young and wiry man clothed in khaki coat and breeches and leather leggins, and wearing a cap with visor shadowing heavily his narrow, sharp-featured countenance.
As the door opened he removed his finger from the bell-push, and drove home recognition with his voice.
"Miss Thursby live here? I got a message for her."
Joan gasped: "Butch!"
"It's me, all right," her brother admitted crisply in his well-remembered tone of irony. "You certainly are one sincere little sleeper. I been ringing here—"
"How did you get in?"
"Rang up the janitor—if that matters. Lis'n: you betta hustle into your clothes quick 's you can if you wanta get home in time to say good-bye to the old woman."
"Mother!" Joan shrilled. "What—what's the matter—?"
"Dyin'," Butch told her briefly and without emotion. "She said she wanted to see you. So get a move on. My car's waitin', and I dassent leave it alone. Hustle—y' understand?"