The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 188/212

"Suppress all newspapers to-day. Convention meets at eleven. If we succeed

a delegation will come to Rouen this afternoon. They will come.

"HELEN."

Tom rubbed his sticky eyelids, and shook his head violently in a Spartan

effort to rouse himself; but what more effectively performed the task for

him were certain sounds issuing from Harkless's room, across the hall. For

some minutes, Meredith had been dully conscious of a rustle and stir in

the invalid's chamber, and he began to realize that no mere tossing about

a bed would account for a noise that reached him across a wide hall and

through two closed doors of thick walnut. Suddenly he heard a quick, heavy

tread, shod, in Harkless's room, and a resounding bang, as some heavy

object struck the floor. The doctor was not to come till evening; Jim had

gone down-stairs. Who wore shoes in the sick man's room? He rushed across

the hall in his pyjamas and threw open the unlocked door.

The bed was disarranged and vacant. Harkless, fully dressed, was standing

in the middle of the floor, hurling garments at a big travelling bag.

The horrified Meredith stood for a second, bleached and speechless, then

he rushed upon his friend and seized him with both hands.

"Mad, by heaven! Mad!"

"Let go of me, Tom!"

"Lunatic! Lunatic!"

"Don't stop me one instant!"

Meredith tried to force him toward the bed. "For mercy's sake, get back to

bed. You're delirious, boy!"

"Delirious nothing. I'm a well man."

"Go to bed--go to bed."

Harkless set him out of the way with one arm. "Bed be hanged!" he cried.

"I'm going to Plattville!"

Meredith wrung his hands. "The doctor----"!

"Doctor be damned!"

"Will you tell me what has happened, John?"

His companion slung a light overcoat, unfolded, on the overflowing,

misshapen bundle of clothes that lay in the bag; then he jumped on the lid

with both feet and kicked the hasp into the lock; a very elegantly

laundered cuff and white sleeve dangling out from between the fastened

lids. "I haven't one second to talk, Tom; I have seventeen minutes to

catch the express, and it's a mile and a half to the station; the train

leaves here at eight fifty, I get to Plattville at ten forty-seven.

Telephone for a cab for me, please, or tell me the number; I don't want to

stop to hunt it up."

Meredith looked him in the eyes. In the pupils of Harkless flared a fierce

light. His cheeks were reddened with an angry, healthy glow, and his teeth

were clenched till the line of his jaw stood out like that of an embattled

athlete in sculpture; his brow was dark; his chest was thrown out, and he

took deep, quick breaths; his shoulders were squared, and in spite of his

thinness they looked massy. Lethargy, or malaria, or both, whatever were

his ailments, they were gone. He was six feet of hot wrath and cold

resolution.