He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door.
Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone.
"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar and watch me. I--I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down."
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes."
Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees. Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once, cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing. The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety trees.
At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights blazed upon the quarry.
"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me."
"We'll have to." He turned his searchlight on the cliff ahead. "There's a path yonder."
Frank worked his stiffened face to relieve the feeling of cold contorted rubber and followed Kenny up the path. Light glimmered dimly through the jungle of frost upon the shack window. Fronded whitely by the sleet, the panes loomed out of the dark like an incandescent series of camera plates, bizarre and oriental. Frank shivered in the wind.