Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/66

 and he had not the faintest notion whether he could manage three steps farther himself or not.

But he did accomplish the three steps farther, he pulled the screen door open, he headed the stricken man he was trying to support toward a big davenport and let him down on it, easing him back against the pillows that he punched up hastily. Then on his knees, grasping the side of the couch, he spoke again in his voice of dry breathlessness: “What must I do?”

Instinctively both hands of the stricken man had sought the region of his heart. Jamie’s thought, as his mind cleared at another man’s extremity, was: “He’s got it mighty near where I have.” And so he repeated again: “What must I do?”

The answer came: “The telephone. You must call my doctor. He must get me to a hospital.”

Pushing against the couch, Jamie rose to his feet and looked around him. Then he saw a telephone on the wall and a small table before it and an open telephone book, so he sat down on the chair and drew a deep breath or two. Then he asked over his shoulder: “Can you give me the number?”

After a paroxysm of pain that brought sweat to the white dome above the white brows sheltering the big eyes that were pools of darkness, there came the answer: “You will find the number and the name on the list beside the ’phone. Doctor Grayson.”

Jamie hunted down the line and found the name and number, and then he put in the call, and while he waited