Jacobs touched him on the arm.

“Oh, Mr. Brooks! Were you the guilty party—running away with Leerie? For the last two hours we’ve been combing the San grounds for her.” The green eyes of the flirtatious nurse gleamed peculiarly catlike in the dusk. “Of course I don’t suppose my opinion counts so very much with you,” there was a honeyed, self-deprecatory quality in the girl’s tone, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t go about so awfully much with Leerie. She’s a dear girl—I don’t suppose it’s really her fault—but she had such a record. And you know it’s my creed that girls of that kind can compromise poor men far oftener than men compromise girls. Oh, I do hope you understand what I mean!”

Peter still wore a smile, but it was a different smile. It was as much like the old one as a search-light is like sunshine. He focused it full on Miss Jacobs’s face. “I’m a shark at understanding. And don’t worry about me. I’m more of a shark in deep water with—with sirens.” He chuckled inwardly at the look of blank incomprehension on the nurse’s face. “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—”