Belatedly, it occurred to Leonidas that Carl had been spoken to. Carl had been primed. There had been ample opportunity for it, back at the station. It had not been intended from the first that this expedition, whether it traveled in an ambulance or a limousine or a howdah, should ever come to rest at Number Forty Birch Hill Road.
“You tell him,” Carl said to Dow.
“He’s right, Shakespeare,” Dow said. “I tell you, I know Dalton and the Street Cleaning Department. If this side’s like this, the other side’ll be worse. I know you’re burning to see your house, but— Say, Shakespeare, I’ve got an idea! I tell you what we better do!”
“Indeed?”
Leonidas mentally sat back and prepared himself for the worst. He expected, at the very least, some suggestion of a private nursing home. Whatever had been decided, Leonidas felt, there was practically nothing that he could do about it.
“It’s a whale of a thought!” Dow said with a rush of genial heartiness. “It’s a wow!”
“Er—what?” Leonidas could almost feel the rush of air as spiked iron gates of a sanitorium swung closed behind him.
“Why, Cassie’s! Let’s go to Cassie’s! She lives on Paddock Street— Bill, do you feel all right? You look as though you’d gulped a goldfish. You going to be sick, or anything?”
“Go on,” Leonidas said in a strained voice.
“Paddock Street’s just off the turnpike, and it’ll be clear. It always is. Cassie wields some strange, mysterious power over the Street Cleaning Department. Mother says it’s her homemade apricot cordial that she doles out as a reward, but I wouldn’t know. Don’t you think that’s a wow of an idea? We’ll go to Cassie’s, and take stock of the situation—and say, hasn’t she got your keys, anyway?”
Leonidas studied the floor carpet, and then nodded.
“We should have thought of it in the first place,” Dow said. “Paddock Street, Dalton Hills, Carl. Ninety-nine. Yes, Shakespeare, you can have her doctor look you over—you’re looking a little white around the gills, you know, still. Then when you’ve rested up some, Cassie can either mesmerize the Street Cleaning Department into doing some plowing, or you can hire a sleigh. I’ve got a—a relation on Birch Hill who uses a sleigh all winter.”
“Perhaps,” Leonidas said slowly, “you’re right. M’yes. You’re quite right.”
His tone convinced Dow, but anyone who knew Leonidas well would not have been deceived for a moment. The slow, measured twirling of the pince-nez was in itself a danger signal.
“But I feel,” Leonidas went on, “that it would be a courteous gesture to warn Cassie. She may not even be up. Suppose you stop at the drugstore in Dalton Hills, and telephone her that we’re coming? And while you’re there, you can get me some Nivirin.”
“Some what?”
“Nivirin,” Leonidas said. “Headache powders. Much as I hate to confess it, my head has begun to throb most painfully. Nivirin—wait, Til write it down for you.” He drew out his wallet and a pencil from his pocket, and wrote busily on a calling card. “There. I’ve jotted down the prescription, in case the druggist doesn’t have them, and I’m sure it won’t take a moment to have it filled. Nivirin is an old compound, but I have every faith in it. It was devised by my old friend Dr. Livingston. I presume you’ve heard of him.”
Leonidas caught himself just in time to keep from adding something about Mr. Stanley and Darkest Africa. That was the danger with the Maharajah touch. It ran away with you if you weren’t careful.
But Dow didn’t notice.
He took the card and gave Carl more directions, while Leonidas absently fingered his wallet and tried to look as wan and anguished as he could.
The instant that the Dalton Hills Pharmacy door closed behind Dow, Leonidas withdrew two ten-dollar bills from his wallet.
“Carl,” he said in a weak voice, “you can’t see the windows for the snow banks, but can you see a florist’s sign across the street anywhere?”
There should be one. There ought to be one. There had to be one!
“Yeah. Over there,” Carl said.
“Would you be willing to take this money and get some roses? I want to take something to Mrs. Price, and I don’t feel equal to going, myself.”
“Sure.” Carl’s first quick look of suspicion at the sight of the bills instantly melted at Leonidas’s plaintive request. Carl felt sorry for the poor old duffer. He hadn’t stood the trip well, and that was a fact. “Sure. I’ll get ‘em. How many roses you want?”
“Get the best you can for the money,” Leonidas said. “And, Carl, have them done up nicely, so they won’t seem to be an afterthought. You know. Have them look like a present.”
Carl nodded.
“Sure, mister, I know. With bows on the box. Okay.”
Three minutes later, Leonidas was in a maroon- colored taxi, headed at a brisk clip toward Birch Hill.
They had been a very full three minutes, Leonidas thought with pleasure. He had accomplished a lot. He had covered a considerable amount of ground.
Screened by the towering snow banks, he had left the limousine, made his way with great rapidity through a network of snow-heaped alleys, and crossed three snow-banked streets before he hailed the maroon-colored taxicab.
In his pocket, furthermore, he had two keys.
One was the key to the limousine’s ignition, which would curtail Carl and Dow for a while after they finished their respective errands.
The other was a key which had dropped unnoticed from Dow’s coat pocket onto the car carpet while he was giving Carl instructions about streets. It was that key which had prompted Leonidas to take his present course.
For the key was tagged with a plainly visible tag, which said succinctly, “40 B.H.Rd. Witherall House.”
Ten minutes later, Leonidas was staring at Number Forty Birch Hill Road from the sidewalk in front, where the maroon taxi had left him.
There was a house, and it was numbered Forty. He could see the numerals on the front door, and he could see the street sign of Birch
