I

Max had rallied well, and things looked bright for him. His patient did
not need him, but K. was anxious to find Joe; so he telephoned the
gas office and got a day off. The sordid little tragedy was easy to
reconstruct, except that, like Joe, K. did not believe in the innocence
of the excursion to Schwitter's. His spirit was heavy with the
conviction that he had saved Wilson to make Sidney ultimately wretched.

For the present, at least, K.'s revealed identity was safe. Hospitals
keep their secrets well. And it is doubtful if the Street would
have been greatly concerned even had it known. It had never heard of
Edwardes, of the Edwardes clinic or the Edwardes operation. Its medical
knowledge comprised the two Wilsons and the osteopath around the corner.
When, as would happen soon, it learned of Max Wilson's injury, it would
be more concerned with his chances of recovery than with the manner of
it. That was as it should be.

But Joe's affair with Sidney had been the talk of the neighborhood. If
the boy disappeared, a scandal would be inevitable. Twenty people had
seen him at Schwitter's and would know him again.

To save Joe, then, was K.'s first care.

At first it seemed as if the boy had frustrated him. He had not been
home all night. Christine, waylaying K. in the little hall, told him
that. "Mrs. Drummond was here," she said. "She is almost frantic. She
says Joe has not been home all night. She says he looks up to you, and
she thought if you could find him and would talk to him--"

"Joe was with me last night. We had supper at the White Springs Hotel.
Tell Mrs. Drummond he was in good spirits, and that she's not to worry.
I feel sure she will hear from him to-day. Something went wrong with his
car, perhaps, after he left me."

He bathed and shaved hurriedly. Katie brought his coffee to his room,
and he drank it standing. He was working out a theory about the boy.
Beyond Schwitter's the highroad stretched, broad and inviting, across
the State. Either he would have gone that way, his little car eating up
the miles all that night, or--K. would not formulate his fear of what
might have happened, even to himself.

As he went down the Street, he saw Mrs. McKee in her doorway, with a
little knot of people around her. The Street was getting the night's
news.

He rented a car at a local garage, and drove himself out into the
country. He was not minded to have any eyes on him that day. He went
to Schwitter's fir