"No, we haven't a thermometer, and do not know how to use one, anyway."

"Well, I'll be out immediately," was the brusque answer. "I must see him to-night--don't exactly like the symptoms. I saw him in driving past your home the other day, and did not quite like his looks."

Mostyn dragged himself up the stairs. Pa.s.sing Mitch.e.l.l's room, he half paused at the door. Should he wake him and explain the situation? He decided against it. The child's condition would only loosen the man's pent-up wrath in the presence of the physician and perhaps delay the examination. He went back to the nursery, and, lifting d.i.c.k in his arms, he bore him into his own room, which was cooler. He dampened a towel in ice-water, folded it, and laid it on the flushed brow.

"That feels nice, Daddy," d.i.c.k smiled, grimly, "but it hurts here,"

putting his hand gingerly on his side.

A few minutes later the doctor's car was heard on the drive. Mostyn descended to meet him. They shook hands formally, and Mostyn led him up the stairs to the patient. The doctor was past middle age, iron-gray, full-whiskered, and stockily built. He took the child's temperature, and looked grave as he glanced at the thermometer under the drop-light, and washed it in a gla.s.s of water.

"One-hundred and five!" he said, crisply. "Big risks have been taken, Mostyn. I only hope my fears are groundless."

"Your fears?"

But the doctor seemed not to hear. He raised the child's thin night-shirt and pa.s.sed his fingers gently over the abdomen.

"Tell me where that pain is, d.i.c.k," he said, softly. "Where does it hurt most when I press down?"

"There! there!" d.i.c.k cried out in sudden agony.

"I see. That will do. I sha'n't hurt you again." He drew the shirt down and moved back toward the lamp.

"I'm sure you will give him--something to reduce that fever." Mostyn knew that the remark was a mere tentative foil against the verdict stamped upon the bearded face. The doctor slowly wiped the tiny tube and restored it to its case.

"I must be frank," he said, in a low tone. "My opinion is that he must be operated on at once--without delay--early in the morning at the very latest."

"Why--why--surely--" Mostyn began, but went no further. The objects in the room seemed to swim about him. He and the doctor were buoys floating face to face.

"It is appendicitis," Loyd said. "Of course, I'd call another doctor in consultation before anything is done, but I am sure I am not mistaken."

Mostyn's soul stared from a dead face with all but glazed eyes. He nodded toward the door opening into the hall and led the doctor from the room. In the hall he put his hand on Loyd's shoulder.

"I am sure you know best," he gasped. "What do you propose?"

"That I take him at once to my sanitarium in my car. In warm weather like this you won't have to wrap him much. You'd better get him ready now. I'll telephone the nurse to have a room prepared."

"Very well." Mostyn was stalking back to the child when the doctor detained him.

"And his mother--I don't see her about; is she at home?"

"No, she is out of town. Just now she is away."

"Well, you had better telegraph her."

"I--I don't exactly know where she is." Mostyn was vaguely thankful for the dimness of the hall light.

"You must find her--locate her at once."

"Is it really so--so serious as that?"

"I may as well be frank." The doctor cleared his throat. "It won't do any good to mislead you. The little fellow has a weak heart, as I explained the last time he was ill, and it seems worse now. Then--then, I am sorry to say that I detect strong symptoms of peritonitis. If I could have seen him a week ago--I presume the fact of your wife being away, and you being busy at the bank--"

Mostyn's head rocked like a stone balanced on a pivot. "Yes," he said.

"I am afraid we were not attentive enough. Will you be ready soon?"

"Yes; tell d.i.c.k it is for a ride in my car. He won't mind it. He is a plucky little fellow. He has fought that pain for several days. We would have known it earlier but for that."

Five minutes later Mostyn sat on the rear seat of the automobile with his child in his arms. The doctor sat in front beside the colored chauffeur. Mostyn chatted with d.i.c.k about the ride, about the "nice, cool room" he was to have at the "good doctor's house"; but, to his growing horror, d.i.c.k had lost interest in all things. He lay pa.s.sive and completely relaxed, a lack-l.u.s.ter gleam in his half-closed eyes.

"Am I speeding him to his execution?" Mostyn's very dregs whispered the query. "Is this my last word with him?" Seeing the faces of the doctor and the chauffeur directed ahead, and half ashamed of his tenderness, he bent down and kissed the child's forehead. In vague response d.i.c.k lifted his little hand to the overbrooding cheek, but immediately dropped it to his side.

"Go slowly over this rough place," the doctor ordered; and the speed lessened, to be renewed a little farther on, where the asphalt pavement began again.

Reaching the sanitarium, a s.p.a.cious white building in pleasant, shaded grounds, they alighted. Mostyn, with his boy in his arms, stepped out.

At the door a nurse took d.i.c.k into the house and bore him to a room on the floor above. She spoke to him in a motherly way. As she vanished up the stairs Mostyn saw d.i.c.k's small limp hand hanging down her side. Was it, he asked himself, a farewell salute?

"You may sit here in the waiting-room if you wish, or you may return home in my car," Loyd suggested. "I shall send it at once for the other doctors. You are really of no service here, and, of course, I can communicate with you by 'phone as to our decision."

"I'll be here, or close about on the outside," Mostyn answered. "I presume it will be some time before the consultation?"

"It must be within half an hour. I am not willing to wait longer."

Mostyn sat alone in the sitting-room. A clock on the wall ticked sharply. He heard the wheels of the automobile grind on the pavement as it sped away under the electric lights. He went out on the lawn. He felt in his pocket for a cigar, but, finding none, he forgot it. The dew of the gra.s.s penetrated to his feet. It seemed to him that he felt d.i.c.k's fever coursing through his own veins. He was still outside half an hour later, his eyes raised to the windows of the lighted room occupied by his child, when the automobile returned. Two doctors whom he knew got out and sauntered into the house. He heard them laughing over the mistake a so-called quack had made in the case of a credulous patient, Mostyn lurked back in the shadows--he would not detain them by a useless greeting. He followed them into the house. The nurse at the foot of the stairs was beckoning them to hasten. Mostyn was again alone in the sitting-room. Presently the nurse came in, evidently looking for something. Mostyn caught her eye, and she gave him a hurried but sympathetic look. He decided that he would sound her.

"Do you think an operation will be necessary?" he asked.

Her glance fell. "I have only Dr. Loyd's opinion. He thinks so, and I have never known him to be wrong in diagnosing a case."

"He thinks, also, I believe"--Mostyn's voice sounded as hollow as a phonograph--"that the child has hardly strength enough to resist the--the ordeal?"

She raised her eyes as if doubting her right to converse on the subject. "I think he _is_ afraid of that," she admitted. "Your child is very, very sick."

"And you--you, _yourself?_" Mostyn now fairly implored. "According to _your_ experience, do you think there is a chance of his living through it?"

"I really can't say--I _mustn't_ say," she faltered. "I am only judging by Dr. Loyd's actions. He is very uneasy. Mr. Mostyn, I have no right to speak of it, but your wife ought to be here. The doctor says she is out of town. She ought to get here if possible; she will always regret it if she doesn't. I am a mother myself, and I know how she will feel."

Mostyn stifled a reply which rose to his lips. He heard, rather than saw, her leave the room, for a mist had fallen on his sight. In the patient's chamber above there was the grinding of feet on the floor.

The chandelier overhead shook. The crystal prisms tinkled like little bells. Presently the nurse came to him.

"Dr. Loyd instructed me to say"--she was looking down on his clasped hands--"that they have agreed that the operation must be performed at once. They all think it is the only chance."

An hour later the aiding doctors came down the stairs, glided softly past the sitting-room door, and pa.s.sed out. He called to one of them.

"Is the operation over?" he asked.

The doctor nodded gravely. He had taken a cigar from his pocket, and was biting the tip from the end. "It was the worst appendix I ever saw, fairly rotten. Loyd will show it to you. It is a serious case, Mostyn.

If Loyd pulls him through it will be a miracle. Peritonitis has already set in, and there is very little heart-action. He is sleeping now, of course, and every possible thing has been done and will be done. He is in the best of hands. We can do nothing but wait."