My wits had been so sharpened by my late adventures that I readily accounted for these false tidings. Dick was absent; Dick alone would have been equal to this diabolical plot for keeping his rival suitors away from Hopefield. The despair in those faces taxed my gravity severely.
"It is extremely sad, but the first diagnosis was erroneous," I answered. "I think it more likely to prove to be chicken-pox when the truth is known."
"Not diphtheria?"
"No immediate danger of diphtheria, I assure you," I replied; "though of course, with winter coming on and all that, one must be prepared for the worst."
While he repeated this to the others, I sought the clerk, who promptly handed me a note which Wiggins had left late the previous afternoon, to be delivered in case I called. He had gone to spend a day or two with Orton, the playwright, who was at his country house, in the hills beyond Mt. Kisco, rehearsing a new piece, in which a friend of Hartley's was to star. I gained the telephone-booth in one jump, and in five minutes I was bawling wildly into Orton's ear. I had known him well in the Hare and Tortoise, and he answered my demand for Wiggins with the heart-breaking news that Hartley had ridden off with some other guests in the house—Orton did n't know where.
"I threw them out; I've got to rewrite my third act; I don't care whether they ever come back," boomed Orton's voice.
"If you don't send Wiggins back to me at Hopefield as fast as he can get there, my third act is ruined."
"What?"
"Tell Wiggins to come back on the run; tell him the world's coming to an end any minute."
"I'll be glad to get rid of him," snapped Orton, in the harried tone of a man whose third act has wilted in rehearsal.