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By Root 24382 0

in the hospital, that night when Joey lay still and quiet, and Graham was sobbing like a child, prostrate on the white covering of the bed. With the incredible rapidity of thought in a mental crisis, he saw the last months, the boy's desire to go to France thwarted, his attempt to interest himself in the business, the tool Marion Hayden had made of him, Anna's doglike devotion, all leading inevitably to catastrophe. And through it all he saw Natalie, holding Graham back from war, providing him with extra money, excusing him, using his confidences for her own ends, insidiously sapping the boy's confidence in his father and himself.

"We'll have to stand up to this together, Graham."

The boy looked up.

"Then - you're not going to throw me over altogether - "

"No."

"But - all this - !"

"If Herman Klein had not done it, there were others who would, probably. It looks as though you had provided them with a tool, but I suppose we were vulnerable in a dozen ways."

He rose, and they stood, eyes level, father and son, in the early morning sunlight. And suddenly Graham's arms were around his shoulders, and something tight around Clayton's heart relaxed. Once again, and now for good, he had found his boy, the little boy who had not so long ago stood on a chair for this very embrace. Only now the boy was a man.

"I'm going to France, father," he said. "I'm going to pay them back for this. And out of every two shots I fire one will be for you."

Perhaps he had found his boy only to lose him, but that would have to be as God willed.

At ten o'clock he went up to the house, to change his wet and draggled clothing. The ruins were being guarded by soldiers, and the work of rescue was still going on, more slowly now, since there was little or no hope of finding any still living thing in that flame-swept wreckage. He found Natalie in bed, with Madeleine in attendance, and he learned that her physician had just gone.

He felt that he could not talk to her just then. She had a morbid interest in horrors, and with the sights of that night fresh in his mind he could not discuss them. He stopped, however, in her doorway.

"I'm glad you are resting," he said, "Better stay in bed to-day. It's been a shock."

"Resting! I've been frightfully ill."

"I'm sorry, my dear. I'll come in again on my way out."

"Clay!"

He turned in the doorway.

"Is it all gone? Everything?"

"Practically. Yes."

"But you were insured?"

"I'll tell you about that later. I haven't given it much thought yet. I don't know just how we stand."

"I shall never let Graham go back to it again. I warn you. I've been lying here for hours, thinking that it might have happened as easily as not while he was there."

He hardly listened. He had just remembered Anna.

"I left a girl here last night, Natalie," he said. "Do you happen to know what became of her?"

Natalie stirred on her pillows.

"I should think I do. She fainted, or pretended to faint. The servants looked after her."

"Has she gone?"

"I hope so. It is almost noon. Oh, by the way," she called, as he moved off, "there is a message for you. A woman named Gould, from the Central Hospital. She wants to see you at once. They have kept the telephone ringing all the morning."

Clare Gould! That was odd. He had seen her taken out, a bruised and moaning creature, her masses of fair hair over her shoulders, her eyes shut. The surgeons had said she was not badly hurt. She might be worse than they thought. The mention of her name brought Audrey before him. He hoped, wherever she was, she would know that he was all right.

As soon as he had changed he called the hospital. The message came back promptly and clearly.

"We have a woman named Gould here. She is not badly hurt, but she is hysterical. She wants to see you, but if you can't come at once I am to give you a message. Wait a moment. She has written it, but it's hardly legible."

Clayton waited.

"It's about somebody you know, who had gone on night turn recently at your plant. I can't read the name. It looks like Ballantine."

"It isn't Valentine, is it?"

"Perhaps it is.