"Yes, that"s the trouble." He closed his eyes again, and began to murmur.
"What does he say?" asked Mr. Brewster, lowering his head and almost falling over backward as his astonished ears were greeted by the slowly intoned rhythm:--
"Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea."
"Delirious!" exclaimed the magnate. "Clean off his head! How does one find a doctor in this town?"
"No need, dad," his daughter rea.s.sured him. "It"s just a--a sort of game."
"Game! Did you hear what he said?"
"Well, a kind of pa.s.sword. It"s all right, Dad. It is, really."
Still undecided, Mr. Brewster stared at the injured man.
"I don"t know--" he began, when the eyes opened again.
"Feeling better?" inquired Polly briskly.
"Yes. The charm works perfectly."
"Anything I can do, or get, for you, my boy?" inquired Mr. Brewster, stepping forward.
"What"s in the ice-box?" asked the other anxiously.
"Oh!" cried the girl in distress. "He"s starving! When did you eat last?"
"I can"t exactly remember. It was about five this morning, I think. A banana, and, as I recall it, a small one."
"Dad!" cried the girl, but that prompt and efficient gentleman was already halfway to the cook, dragging Sherwen along as interpreter.
"He"ll get whatever there is in the shortest known time," the girl a.s.sured her patient. "Trust dad. Now, you lie back and let me fix up a fresh bandage."
"You"d have made a great trained nurse," he murmured, as she adjusted the clean strips that Sherwen had sent in. "Don"t pin my ear down. It"s got to help hold my goggles on."
"The dear funny goggles!" Picking them up, she patted them with dainty fingers, before setting them aside. He watched her uneasily, much in the manner of a dog whose bone has been taken away.
"Do you mind giving them back?" he said.
"But you"re not going to wear them here," she protested.
"I"ve got so used to them," he explained apologetically, "that I don"t feel really dressed without them."
She handed them back and he adjusted them to the bandages. "For the present, rest is prescribed you know," said she.
"Oh, no!" he declared. "As soon as I"ve had something to eat, I"ll go.
There are a hundred things to be done. Where are my gloves?"
"What gloves? Oh, those white abominations? Why on earth do you wear them?" Her glance fell upon his right hand, which lay half-open beside him. "Oh--oh--oh!" she cried in a rising scale of distress. "What have you done to your hands?"
He reddened perceptibly.
"Nothing."
"Nothing, indeed! Tell me at once!"
"I"ve been rowing."
"Where to?"
"Oh, out to a ship."
"There aren"t any ships, except the Dutch warship. Was it to her?"
"Yes."
"To carry our message--MY message?"
He squirmed.
"I"m awfully sleepy," he protested. "It isn"t fair to cross-examine a witness--"
"When was it?" his ruthless interrogator broke in.
"Night before last."
"How far?"
"How can I tell? Not far. A few miles."
"And back. And it took you all night," she accused.
"What if it did?" he cried peevishly. "A man"s got to have some relief from work, hasn"t he? It was livelier than sitting all night with one"s eye glued to a microscope barrel!"
"Oh, beetle man, beetle man! I don"t know about you at all. What kind of a strange queer creature are you? Have you wings, Mr. Beetle Man?"
Suddenly she bent over and laid her soft lips upon the scarified palm.
The Unspeakable Perk sat up, with a half-cry.
"Now the other one," said the girl. Her face was a mantle of rose-color, but her eyes shone.
"I won"t! You shan"t!"
"The other one!" she commanded imperiously.
"Please, Miss Brewster--"
A noise at the door saved him. There stood Thatcher Brewster, magnate, multi-millionaire, and master of men, a huge tray in his hands.