Kenwick shook his head. "I won't be able to leave now until to-morrow. I'll have to wait and get some money."
Gifford waved aside the objection. "Your expenses will be paid, of course, as mine would have been. I'll advance you the funds. And you don't have to do a thing, you know. Wellman's man will meet the train at the other end. Wait and see the casket in his hands and then you're through."
He watched the other man eagerly. For a moment Kenwick didn't trust himself to meet his gaze. He hoped that he was not betraying in his face the jubilant conviction that his guardian angel had suddenly returned from a vacation and had renewed an interest in him. In order not to appear too eagerly acquiescent he asked casually: "Who is the fellow? Or who was he?"
"Man by the name of Marstan. He wasn't known around here. His wife had to come down from the city to identify him." He glanced at his watch. "There's just about time to make the train now. I've got my car outside. It's luck, your stumbling in here like this. Sheer luck."
"Luck is too mild a word for it," Kenwick assured himself as he crawled into his Pullman a few moments later. "It's providence, old boy. That's what it is."
The bromide had begun to do its work. And his leg, properly bandaged, gave him no pain. Almost hilarious over the knowledge that daylight would find him among familiar surroundings again, he fell into the delicious slumber that follows sudden surcease of mental strain.
When he awoke the train was speeding through the oak-dotted region of San Mateo. He had refused to accept any expense-money from Gifford except enough for his breakfast, and after a cup of coffee in the diner, he sat gazing out of the window, not caring to open conversation with any of his fellow-travelers, completely absorbed in the business of readjusting himself to this environment that he had loved and from which the war had so abruptly uprooted him.
It was glorious to be back again, to catch up the loose threads of the old life. And in spite of the stark bareness of winter, the landscape had never seemed so appealing. The wide level stretches of pasture, cut by ribbons of asphalt, the prosperous little towns which the Coast Company's fast train ignored on its thunderous dash northward, the children walking to school, the pruners waving their shears to him as he sped by—all these breathed a healthy normal living that made the neurotic adventures of the past day seem remote and unreal.
Under the long shed of the Third and Townsend Depot he lingered only until he had carried out Gifford's instructions. Then he went on down the open corridor to the waiting-rooms. Outside the voices of taxi-drivers and hotel busmen made the radiant winter morning hideous with their cries. The waiting-room was warm and bright. There was no better place, Kenwick reflected, to map out his program. The air was a tonic, crisp and tipped with frost. It was too cold to be without an overcoat and yet, if Everett did not make punctual reply to the message that he was about to send, he might have to part with it for a time.
He found a seat in a corner where he would be out of the draft of incessantly opening doors. For in spite of his good night's sleep he felt weak and a little giddy. Resolving to dismiss the past from his mind and concern himself solely with the present was good logic, but difficult of accomplishment. First, and dominating all his thought, was Marcreta Morgan. The thought of her brought him a dull pain. So many letters he had written her since his return to New York, and not one of them had she ever answered. Once, in vague alarm, he had even written to Clinton, but there had been no reply. And then pride had held him silent. So he couldn't go to the house on Pine Street now. He wouldn't go, he decided fiercely, until he had a decent position and had reëstablished himself in civilian life.