“Of course not.”
Under his surface anger, she saw the old look of hurt wonder that harrowed her so.
“Come back—any time, Rufe—come whenever you can. Always a place here, you know.”
XXXVII
JOHN HIGGINS’ CODE
WHEN Dicky Cobden reached New York, he found that Pidge had been called to Los Angeles, because her father was ill. It was an evening in mid-January, 1919, and he went at once to his mother’s house in Fiftieth Street. The strain of waiting for his home-coming had been almost too much there. Grandfather had flickered out; his bed and chairs gaped and would not be comforted. Dicky went into the living arms, however, and found rest and gave it. His mother and aunt and sister livened up like plants, newly-watered. He was queerly astonished to learn that Pidge recently had called upon his people—“just a social call,” his mother said.
Outwardly things looked as hopeless as possible at The Public Square. From his latest retirement to his rooms for a change of luck, John Higgins had been taken to the hospital, instead of returning to his desk. It was a gray-faced old man that Dicky found in the early morning of his first full day at home, in a room that smelled of drugs. The face didn’t look at him squarely. The light hurt John Higgins’ eyes and made the features writhe. Dicky wanted to move around to the other side of the bed, so the face would be shaded, but his old friend was gripping him with both hands.
“We have been looking for you a long time, Dicky,” he kept saying.
It wasn’t the unshaven white stubble that changed the face so much as the quiver of the upper lip, when John Higgins spoke.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Indigestion—all kinds of indigestion. Damn ’em, Dicky, they’ve made me eat my own words——”