"Take hold of yourself! You've seen this woman! You've got to talk to me!"
But Brown screamed incoherently with a diminishing power. The nurse had run into the hall. Through the open doorway her voice tore anxiously, summoning a house physician.
Garth's feeling of a desperate helplessness increased. Before him was the knowledge that would safeguard Alsop and his friends, that would insure Garth's own life, that would destroy, perhaps, a dangerous foreign influence, and the man couldn't speak.
At last the nurse's calls seemed to seep through the bandage into that tortured brain, suggesting the necessity for caution. In a whisper coherent words came again from the trembling lips.
"For God's sake, don't look behind the white veil! No! No! I have. That's madness!"
The doctor slipped in and hurried to the bedside. In response to his touch Brown lay down.
"Don't dope him," Garth begged. "That man knows things on which many lives depend. He must tell them to me before night. When will he be able to talk straight?"
The doctor smiled tolerantly.
"You don't seem to understand. A frightful fracture at the base of the brain. He seems inclined to be quiet enough now."
The doctor turned away. Garth followed him to the door, urging him to use his skill to make Brown talk. The nurse had remained by the bed. Garth heard her sharp cry through his own pleading. The sound puzzled him because it was a trifle strangled. The doctor, however, turned like a flash and hurried back to the bed. Garth looked. The nurse bent over the bandaged head. The doctor fumbled quickly beneath the bed clothes. He arose, glanced at Garth, and spread his hands. Garth picked at his hat, unwilling to believe.