Accordingly Professor Barrowes wended his way from the museum to Jerry's studio. Here, enthused and happy over the success of his trip, he failed to notice the abnormal condition of Jerry, whose listless hot hand dropped from his, and whose eye went roving absently above the head of his volubly chattering friend. It was only after the restless and continued pacing of the miserable Jerry and the failure to respond to questions put to him continued for some time, that Professor Barrowes was suddenly apprized that all was not well with his friend. He stopped midway in a long speech in which words like Mesozoic, Triassic and Jurassic prevailed and snapped his glasses suddenly upon his nose. Through these he scrutinised the perturbed and oblivious Jerry scientifically. The glasses were blinked off. Professor Barrowes seized the young man by the arm and stopped him as he started to cross the room for possibly the fiftieth time.
"Come! Come! What is it? What is the trouble, lad?"
Jerry turned his bloodshot eyes upon his old teacher. His unshaven, haggard face, twitching from the effects of his acute nearness to nervous prostration, startled Professor Barrowes. Lack of sleep, refusal of nourishment, the ceaseless search, the agonising fear and anguished longing took their full toll from the unhappy Jerry, but as his glance met the firm one of his friend, a tortured cry broke from his lips.
"Oh, for God's sake, Professor Barrowes, why did you not come when I asked you to? Sunny—Oh, my God!"
Professor Barrowes had Jerry's hand gripped closely in his own, and the disjointed story came out at last.
Sunny had come! Sunny had gone! He loved Sunny! He could not live without Sunny—but Sunny had gone! They had turned her out into the streets—his own mother and Miss Falconer.
For the first time, it may be said, since his discovery of the famous fossil of the Red Deer River, Professor Barrowes's mind left his beloved dinornis. He came back solidly to earth, shot back by the calling need of Jerry. Now the man of science was wide awake, and an upheaval was taking place within him. The words of his first telegram to Jerry rattled through his head just then: "The dinornis more important than Sunny." Now as he looked down on the bowed head of the boy for whom he cherished almost a father's love, Professor Barrowes knew that all the dried-up fossils of all the ages were as a handful of worthless dust as compared with this single living girl.
By main force Professor Barrowes made Jerry lie down on that couch, and himself served him the food humbly prepared by his heartbroken mother, who told Jerry's friend with a quivering lip that she felt sure he would not wish to take it from his mother's hands.
There was no going out for Jerry on that night. His protestations fell on deaf ears, and as a further precaution, Professor Barrowes secured possession of the key of the apartment. Only when the professor pointed out to him the fact that a breakdown on his part would mean the cessation of his search would Jerry finally submit to the older man taking his place temporarily. And so, at the telephone, which rang constantly all of that evening, Professor Barrowes took command. A thousand clues were everlastingly turning up. These were turned over to Jinx and Bobs, the former flying from one part of the city and country to another in his big car, and the latter, with an army of newspaper men helping him, and given full license by his paper, influenced by the elder Hammond and Potter. Finally, Professor Barrowes, having given certain instructions to turn telephone calls over to Monty in Bobs' apartment, sat down to Jerry's disordered work table, and, glasses perched on the end of his nose, he sorted out the mail. The afternoon letters still lay unopened, tossed down in despair by Jerry, when he failed to find that characteristic writing that he knew was Sunny's.
But now Professor Barrowes' head had suddenly jerked forward. His chin came out curiously, and his eyes blinked in amazement behind his glasses. He set them on firmer, fiercely, and slowly reread that two-line epistle. The hand holding the paper shook, but the eyes behind the glasses were bright.