As he walked toward his street car he offered little prayers to a God whom he now realized he had invoked all too seldom of late. He wondered why he should have been saved and McCall chosen to undergo this ordeal. And how would Dorothy take it? Would she be at his bedside?
In Paris the operation had been accepted fatalistically and in a spirit of bravado by both of them. That was because it lay still so far in the future and, too, perhaps, because they then still retained the war-time psychology, the callous outlook upon life and death that frequent contact with these had formed.
The car jolted and was dirty. The blacks, he noticed, were squeezed together in a section dirtier than the one in which he sat. It was growing warm. In another few weeks summer would be there.
Pinkney was just leaving the telegraph office.
“Oh, yes, I was going to see you today,” said Robert with a guilty feeling.
“So you got our summons from the Fourth Dimension?” inquired Pinkney with an earnest smile. “We need brave men, real men, Hamilton, to carry on our work.” There was an allusion to the flaming rood that Robert did not understand and he was able to get away only long enough to send a short message to McCall. Pinkney took his arm and insisted on escorting him to his office. On the way they paused to exchange a few words with acquaintances, some of whom referred mysteriously to the coming concilium.
Pinkney’s office was a truly magnificent one, just off the main office of the Corinth Lumber Company, with a commanding sweep of the city’s principal thoroughfare. One’s feet sank into a soft, thick rug of mauve and one’s eye immediately took in the glass-covered mahogany desk and the decorations on the wall—a silk American flag under glass, his captain’s commission in the home guards, a college diploma, a membership in some civic organization and a poem “To My Mother”—all framed. Not until they had come quite into the room did they notice that they were not alone. A rather tall, wavy-haired man with shrewd blue eyes and a straight-line mouth was standing at the window, chewing a cigar. He wore a light checked suit and tan oxfords, and had the appearance of looking older than he really was. As he saw Pinkney he waved his right hand in an indefinite salute without, at the same time, straightening up.
“Captain Hamilton,” said Pinkney, “this is Mr. Griffith.”
They shook hands, Robert mumbled an acknowledgment and Mr. Griffith said he was very glad to meet him.
“Mr. Griffith—later you’ll know him by a rather more pretentious title, Robert—is what I might term the brains of the Tribe,” remarked Pinkney. “Won’t you gentlemen take a seat? Now we can talk more comfortably. Cigars? Oh, try a good brand.”