. "By the
way, just what did you want Miss Leary for? Not another accident?"

The girl gave her head a disgusted toss. "Oh, they want her to help an old
man die. He came up here a week ago. I saw him then, and he looked ready
to burst. Doctor MacByrn said he weighed over three hundred and had a
blood pressure of two hundred and ten. They can't bring it down, and his
heart is about done for. Leerie always gets those dying cases. Ugh!" The
girl shuddered. "Guess they wouldn't put me on any of those sure-dead
cases; it's bad enough when you happen on them."

Peter shot her a pitying glance and walked back to his car. He was just
climbing in when the girl's voice chirped back to him. "Just the night
for a ride, isn't it? I couldn't think of letting you go all alone and be
lonesome. Isn't it lucky I'm off duty till ten!"

"Lucky for the patient!" Peter mumbled under his breath; then aloud:
"Sorry, but I'm unlucky. Only enough gasoline to get her back to the
garage. Good night." He swung the car free of the curb, leaving little
red-headed, green-eyed Miss Jacobs in the process of gathering up her
skirts and mounting into thin air.

Meanwhile Sheila had followed the superintendent to her office. "It's a
case of cerebral hemorrhages. The man is no fool; he knows his condition,
and he's been getting increasingly hard to take care of every minute since
he found out. Maybe you've heard of him. He's Brandle, the coal magnate.
Quite alone in the world; no children, and his wife died some few years
ago. He's very peculiar, and no one seems to know what to say to him or do
for him. I'm a little afraid--" and the superintendent paused to consider
her words before committing herself. "I think perhaps there have been too
many offers of prayers and scriptural readings for his taste."

"Probably he'd prefer the last _Town Topics_ or the latest detective
story." Sheila shook her head violently. "Why can't a man be allowed to
die the way he chooses--instead of your way, or my way, or the Reverend
Mr. Grumble's way?"

"Miss Barry is on the case now, and I'm afraid he's shocked her into--"

"Perpetual devotion." Sheila grinned sympathetically as she completed the
sentence. They had called her Prayer-Book Barry her probation year because
of her unswerving religious point of view, and her years of training had
only served to increase it. The picture of anything as sensitively pious
as Prayer-Book Barry helping a coal magnate to depart this