"Lemme see your hands. Humph. Soft. Now stand on that threshold.
That's it. Walk t' the' end o' the hall an' back. Step lively."
"But "began Miss Frances in protest. This was cruelty.
"I'm the doctor, miss," interrupted Ryan, crisply. "If he falls down he goes t' bed, an' you stay. If he makes it, he follows my instructions."
When Hawksley returned to the starting line the walls rocked, there were two or three blinding stabs of pain; but he faced this unusual Irishman with never a hint of the torture. A wild longing to be gone from this kindly prison - to get away from the thought of the girl.
"All right," said Ryan. "Now toddle back t' bed."
"Bed?"
"Yep. Goin' t' give you a rub that'll start all your machinery workin'."
Docilely Hawksley obeyed. He wasn't going to let them know, but that bed was going to be tolerably welcome.
"Well!" said Miss Frances. "I don't see how he did it."
"I do," said the ex-pugilist. "I told him to. Either he was a false alarm, or he'd attempt the job even if he fell down. The hull thing is this: Make a guy wanta get well an' he'll get well.
If he's got any pride, dig it up. Go after 'em. He hasn't lost any blood. No serious body wound. A crack on the conk. It mighta killed him. It didn't. He didn't wabble an' fall down.
So my dope is right. Drop in in a few days an' I'll show yuh."
Miss Frances held out her hand. "You've handled men," she said, with reluctant admiration.
"Oh, boy! - millions of 'em, an' each guy different. Believe me!
Make 'em wanta."
Cutty attended his conferences. He learned immediately that he was booked to sail the first week in May. His itinerary began at Piraeus, in Greece, and might end in Vladivostok. But they detained him in Washington overtime because he was a fount of information the departments found it necessary to draw upon constantly. The political and commercial aspects of the polyglot peoples, what they wanted, what they expected, what they needed; racial enmities. The bugaboo of the undesirable alien was no longer bothering official heads in Washington. Stringent immigration laws were in the ******.
What they wanted to know was an American's point of view, based upon long and intimate associations.
Washington reminded him of nothing so much as a big sheep dog. The hazardous day was over; the wolves had been driven off and the sheep into the fold; and now the valiant guardian was turning round and round and round preparatory to lying down to sleep. For Washington would go to sleep again, naturally.
Often it occurred to him what a remarkable piece of machinery the human brain was. He could dig up all this dry information with the precise accuracy of an economist, all the while his actual thoughts upon Kitty. His nights were nightmares. And all this unhappiness because he had been touched with the lust for loot. Fundamentally, this catastrophe could be laid to the drums of jeopardy.
