“Why, he’s your roommate!”
“I know it—damn it! Keep on. Judge Tiffany has been caring for him, holding him up so he could bear it, assisted by Miss Sadie Brown, a camper at Santa Eliza. She’s the one I was talking to.”
“Who is she? Any chance for a photograph?”
“I braced her for a picture. She wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Let me try! I’ll get it.”
“See here, you fellows, I’ll attend to that. I’ll let you all in if she gives up. I’ll play 254 you square. He’s my roommate—can’t you trust me to handle it? Keep on. Miss Sadie Brown, works at the Emporium, lives 2196 Valencia—” Mark was reading from a perfectly blank sheet of copy paper—“Judge Tiffany will take him home. He wired ahead for a private ambulance from Havens. That’s all of that. Now what have you fellows got? Help me out; it’s none too easy for me.”
As he took notes, asked questions, formed his “story” in his mind, Mark never took his eyes off that group in the corner.
Now they were racing down the last stage of the trip, with full freeway. Now they were drawing into the ferry station. Under the lights stood a buzzing crowd, its blacks shot with the white coats of hospital orderlies. A dozen ambulances, their doors open, stood backed to the platform. Eleanor sagged down on the floor with a sigh as two orderlies lifted Bertram’s arms from her shoulders, made shift to get him upon their stretcher.
But the doctor stopped them.
“Get this old man first,” he said, “and be careful. That young fellow ought to pull through.”