That was, however, a debatable question, for the instant her sharp and imperative voice was silent something happened far down the lane. There was a dull detonation, and a brief flash of flame, and the flying figure went suddenly down to the earth and was still, and Glen Darrow, leaving Mrs. Eugenia Parker behind, went forward in a spurt of speed.
When they came up to her, Janice Jennings and Nancy Carey and Luke Manders, the President of the Federated Clubs, and the crowding, clamoring workers from the Altonia, they found her seated on the ground with the broken and bleeding thing which had been young Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena in her arms, his blood on her hands, on her face, on her blazing hair, but she rose at once, without a word, relinquishing him to his mother.
CHAPTER XIX
Glen Darrow, being her father’s daughter, decides that promises are made to be kept.
SHE steadily refused to see him in the fortnight which followed. During the first frightened days of consultations and hourly bulletins Miss Ada telephoned constantly for news, and the girl received her reports gravely and gratefully. He had a fighting chance; he would live, but he would lose an arm: the arm would be saved but the hand must go: he would keep his hand, or the greater portion of it: he wasn’t even going to lose a finger, and there would be only one small scar on his forehead!
All evidence pointed clearly to Black Orlo. He had been known to make threats, audibly, and in the blurred pages of The Torch, and he had never been seen since he handed Pap Tolliver the note for Glen Darrow. The law was utterly unable to pick up a clue.
As soon as he was able to see visitors Peter sent for Glen, imperatively at first, then humbly, and at length wheedlingly, but although he wrote that Babe Jennings and Nancy Carey and Mary-Lou Tenafee had each been granted a royal audience, the doctor’s daughter stayed away.
“I believe,” he told his mother reflectively, “that you’ll have to go and get her for me.”
Mrs. Parker looked up from her letters and considered him. The remark was reminiscent, some way, and she sent her trained memory to the card index of her mind. He looked even younger and fairer than usual with his convalescent pallor and his bandaged head, his pale blue silk pajamas and his blue brocaded dressing gown—endearingly like the little boy of eleven who had— That was it! Peter with a broken leg in a cast, Peter sending a telephone summons and then a beguiling little note and then a maid to bring the small sweetheart of the moment, and all these failing, making the calm statement to his mother—“I believe you’ll have to go and get her for me!”
She had gone, amusedly, and rather annoyed at herself, but the nurse was very particular that he shouldn’t bring his temperature up by fretting.... A pink, thick, unpleasant little girl, she had privately thought her, while she overawed the very ordinary mother and brought the child back in triumph for a half hour’s visit. “You sent me for a girl once before, Peter, do you remember? When you were eleven, and had broken your leg?”
“Did I, Eugenia? Yes, of course I did—the little fat Dorothy Something-or-other—the Sheba of the hour! And you got her, I remember distinctly.”