Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/241

 "I?" replied the medical man in some surprise.

"Yes."

"I—why, I don't know," he said.

The colonel faintly smiled. "Where do you live, then?"

"In Drexel Boulevard."

"That's the Fifth," the colonel said. "Warren carried that."

"Did he?" The doctor looked as if he were ashamed. "We mustn't talk any more just now."

Foerder remained until evening, pacing the anteroom, his hands behind him, his lips twitching in his involuntary smile. Now and then he took a turn in the long, dark, softly carpeted hall, to smoke a cigarette. At times some politician would come with a scared face and inquire about the colonel, and the doctor always demanded news of the battle, before he answered the questions. The reports brought by the politicians were not encouraging, and they hurried outside again. Their visits, as the afternoon waned, became fewer. Even Mosely and Garwood had been glad of the exciting excuse offered by the First District convention in Italia Hall down Clark Street to escape from the shadowed headquarters.