“Thanks for the respite,” said King Horn politely. “I certainly appreciate the way you hang around the Tennant outfit just to do press-agent work for me. That’s what you do hang around for, isn’t it, Frank?”
Franklin Cross, still very red in the face, consigned the other man to the conventional place and switched more mercilessly than ever at the grass. As they drew near the small operations office that cowered beside one of the big hangars, he stopped suddenly, his eyes fixed upon the doorway.
Lyle Tennant was standing there. Her hands were hidden behind her back, but Cross could tell by tiny, jerky movements of her arms that they were intertwining and clutching at each other. Her lips were compressed and her face was no less pale than the white throat revealed by the small V of her dress. But all this seemed to accentuate her fragile beauty. Her eyes, the blue, scintillant eyes that Franklin Cross had studied so earnestly since the Tennant circus leased this field, were not upon him, but upon King Horn.
“Here I am again, Lyle!” King greeted her cheerily. “I’ve bust out in a new place—left arm. Are you all out of iodine and sympathy?”
“I’ll wait here,” Cross muttered and veered toward the corner of the hangar.
“Come in,” Lyle Tennant said in an even voice to King.
Inside the cramped little office the girl made him sit down in a chair beside the desk. Silently she set about cleaning the long, shallow wound.
King Horn found himself oppressed by her wordlessness. He realized that it had been some time since she had last urged him to be more careful.
“This really wasn’t my fault,” he explained, with a laugh that didn’t sound right even in his own ears. “I was all through the stunt stuff when I cracked.”
“I saw what happened,” Lyle Tennant said. She bent closer over his arm with her cotton swab. “I saw the whole flight.”