"Very well," Rodrigo replied softly. "I will use—my own judgment."
He drove back to New York at a snail's pace, the speed of his car in harmony with his thoughts of the long, dreary months of remorse ahead of him.
The next day Rodrigo tried hard to submerge himself in the numerous details of business that made up his work and John's with Dorning and Son. It was the only way now that he could stand by his stricken friend. Mary Drake was his able lieutenant—a silent, rather impersonal sort of lieutenant, to be sure, but he could expect nothing different now, he grimly told himself.
An alarming week followed at the Dorning home in Greenwich. For two or three days John's condition was very bad. There were periods in which he alternately raved in hysteric delirium and then sank into a coma, recognizing nobody and sustained by a scarcely detectable heart-beat. In his periods of delirium he called loudly upon Elise, upon Rodrigo, upon the mother who had died in his childhood, while the nurse, Alice Pritchard, and Doctor Hotchkiss labored with physical strength and opiates to quiet him. In that week, Rodrigo lived through a hundred hells, calling on the telephone every few hours to receive bulletins that sank his heart anew each time.
At the end of the week he learned from the doctor that John's physical condition had taken a slight turn for the better. Mentally, however, he was very bad. Dr. Hotchkiss indicated his fears that, unless the strain were in some way removed, his young patient's mind might go.
In disposing of the increased business worries placed upon his shoulders by the absence of John, Rodrigo found unexpectedly efficient assistance in the person of Max Rosner. For Rodrigo had taken a practical means of making good John's promise that something would be done for Rosner, after the dramatic encounter in which Rodrigo had saved his friend from the leaden danger in Rosner's revolver. John had advanced the little man a loan and placed his ill wife in the hospital. Rodrigo had suggested a way for the harassed little man to repay the money and regain his self-respect. John's responsibilities in Dorning and Son had always been too heavy. Rodrigo suggested the installation of Rosner as John's assistant, pointing out that while the ex-employee was no executive, he knew the business and would doubtless prove very acceptable in a subordinate capacity.
During the time Rosner was winning back his health and mental balance, his duties had been light. In the weeks just before Elise's disappearance, he had gradually been given larger responsibilities and had been executing them surprisingly well. Now, with John gone, he stepped manfully into the breach and performed yeoman service in enabling Rodrigo to carry on. Henry Madison was his usual capable self in managing the retail sales force; however, without the aid of Rosner, Rodrigo frequently told himself that the buying and important outside contract work of the concern, the part of the business on which the reputation of Dorning and Son rested, would have gone to pieces.
Moreover, Rodrigo discovered in Rosner, whom he had hitherto regarded with some distaste, personal qualities and a sympathy that made him really like the frail middle-aged man and established a bond between them.
It started in the second week of John's illness when Rosner, who fairly worshipped Rodrigo now for the kindness he had done him, said timidly at the end of a business conference, "How is John this morning?"
"Improving a little, as rapidly as anybody could expect."