CHAPTER IV
THE MYSTERY PAUSES, AND OTHER THINGS GO FORWARD
The doctor drew back from examining a badly bruised, cut, and skinned youth and smiled.
"Well, young man," said he, "if I were you, the next time I saw an automobile making right for me, I'd get out of its way."
"I guess I'm all right," Herrick grinned. The grin was rather sketchy. He was not very secure yet in which world he was.
On first recovering consciousness he had found himself lying with his head in Christina's lap, and had supposed he was in heaven. But it hadn't been heaven; it had still been the middle of Ninety-third Street and Christina was sitting in the dust thereof. And then he had another glimmer; he was on a couch, and, facing him, Christina was huddled on her heels on the floor with large tears running down her nose and plumping off the end of it into a bowl, full of funny red water, that she held; a cloth in her hand was even redder, and her mouth had such a piteous droop that if only he could have sat up it would have been the natural thing to kiss it. "Darling!" he had said, to comfort her; and she had said, eagerly, "Yes!" just as if that were her name; then another blackness. And now the couch was in her drawing-room and everywhere was the scent and the sheen of her country flowers—larkspur and sweet alyssum and mignonette, the white of wild cucumber vine, the lavender of horsemint, and everywhere the breath of clover—the house was filled with them! Wherever did she get them?
"What's that?" he asked sharply. It was a policeman's helmet.
The policeman was merely left there,—the automobile having escaped without leaving its number behind it,—to take his evidence of the accident. Herrick rather dreaded being laughed at for his surety that it was no accident; but a man who had seen it from a window and the passing lady who had saved his life by shrieking had already testified to the same effect. They had both declared the offending car to be a gray touring-car; a very dark gray, Herrick thought. The policeman, who had read his Sunday special, stooped to be communicative. "Do you remember the young feller," he asked, "that was a witness to the Ingham inquest? Do you remember he got there late through bein' knocked over by 'n automobile?"
Herrick stared.