one before he suggested to John that
Consuello might be able to furnish a clew to Gibson's whereabouts.
Thoughts of her had been flashing in and out of John's mind during the
excitement of the morning. He realized that if anyone knew where Gibson
was it would be Consuello, and again he had the disheartening
apprehension that, faithful to her love, she might be in flight with the
man she was to have married.

"I don't like to speak of it--she's probably very much upset by what has
happened today--but there's only one person who may know where Gibson
is," said Brennan, "and that's Miss Carrillo."

"I'd rather do almost anything than face her, today," said John.

"You mean with your face bandaged up the way it is?" Brennan asked, a
twinkle in his eyes.

"I don't know what she will think of me," John said, ignoring the jest.
"She has believed in Gibson and she may think that what I have helped to
do is a violation of the friendship between us and that I am an
ungrateful and deceitful wretch."

"Don't you want to see her and explain things to her?"

"No, not until she sends for me."

"Suppose she never sends for you--what then?"

"Then I'll know that she never wants to see me and--and--that will be
the end of it, I suppose."

They were silent for a moment and then, while John was pondering over
the thoughts that were in his mind when he had said, "The end of it, I
suppose," Brennan without another word, quoted a quatrain from the verse
that he had recited while they were waiting to overhear the conversation
between Gibson and Cummings:

"So long as Pleasure calls us up,
And duty drives us down,
If you love me as I love you,
What pair so happy as we two?"

John glanced up quickly and saw that Brennan was pretending he just
happened to think of the verse and had quoted it with no particular
intention or reference to the thoughts of either of them.

"'And duty drives us down,'" he repeated, smiling.

A little later all thoughts of Gibson and the suggestion that Consuello
be consulted in the search for him fled from their heads when they were
called by telephone and told that Murphy was sinking rapidly and was not
expected to live many more hours. Together they hurried to the Clara
Barton hospital.

"I wish he could know that the brutes who beat him have been arrested,"
said Brennan as they turned west into Fifth street from Broadway. "I
tried to talk to them, to find out from them what