The Web of the Golden Spider. Bartlett Frederick Orin
Above all, what in the meanwhile had become of his comrade?
When the visiting surgeon came in, Wilson told him quite simply that he must leave at once.
“Better stay, boy. A day here now may save you a month.”
“A day here now might spoil my life.”
“A day outside might cost it.”
“I’m willing.”
“Well, we can’t hold you against your will. But think again; you’ve received an ugly blow there and it has left you weak.”
Wilson shook his head.
“I must get out of here at once, whatever the cost.”
The surgeon indifferently signed the order for his release and moved on. The nurse brought his clothes. His only outside garment was the long, gold embroidered lounging robe he had thrown on while his own clothes were drying. He stared at it helplessly. Then he put in on. It did not matter–nothing mattered but getting back to her as soon as possible.
A few minutes later the citizens of Boston turned to smile at the sight of a young man with pale, drawn face hurrying through the streets wearing a white linen turban and an oriental robe. He saw nothing of them.
CHAPTER VI
Blind Man’s Buff
Wilson undoubtedly would have been stopped by the police within three blocks had it not been for the seriousness of his lean face and the evident earnestness with which he was hurrying about his business. As it was, he gathered a goodly sized crowd of street gamins who hooted at his heels until he was forced to take to the side streets. Here for a few squares he was not annoyed. The thing that was most disturbing him was the realization that he knew neither the name of the street nor the number of the house into which he had so strangely come last night. He knew its general direction–it lay beyond the Public Gardens and backed upon the water front, but that was all. With only this vague description he could not ask for help without exciting all manner of suspicion. He must depend upon his instinct. The situation seemed to him like one of those grotesque predicaments of a dream. Had his brain been less intently occupied than it was with the urgency of his mission, he would have suffered acutely.
He could not have had a worse section of the city to traverse–his course led him through the business district, where he passed oddly enough as a fantastic advertisement for a tea house,–but he kept doggedly on until he reached Tremont Street. Here he was beset by a fresh crowd of urchins from the Common who surrounded him until they formed the nucleus of a crowd. For the first time, his progress was actually checked. This roused within him the same dormant, savage man who had grasped the joist–he turned upon the group. He didn’t do much, his eyes had been upon the ground and he raised them, throwing back his head quickly.
“Let me through,” he said.
A few, even at that, shifted to one side, but a half dozen larger boys pressed in more closely, baiting him on. They had not seen in his eyes what the others saw.
“I’m in a hurry,” he said. “Let me through.”
Some of the crowd laughed; some jeered. All of them waited expectantly. Wilson took a short, quick breath. His frame stiffened, and then without a word he hurled himself forward. He must have been half mad, for as he bored a passage through, striking to the right and left, he saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. His teeth together, his mind once again centered with burning intensity upon the solitary fact that he must get back to the girl who had sent him out to protect her. He was at this moment no more the man who crammed Hebrew verbs in the confines of that small, whitewashed room at the theological school than as though born of a different mother. He was more like that Wilson who in the days of Miles Standish was thought to be possessed of devils for the fierceness with which he fought Indians. It would have taken a half dozen strong men to stop him, and no one ventured to do more than strike at him.
Once he was free of them, he started on, hoping to get across Park Street and into the Common. But the pack was instantly at his heels again after the manner of their kind. He glanced about him baffled, realizing that with the increasing excitement his chances of pulling clear of them lessened. He dreaded the arrival of the police–that would mean questioning, and he could give no satisfactory explanation of his condition. To tell the truth would be to incriminate himself, compromise the girl, and bring about no end of a complication. He turned sharply and made up the hill at a run. He was a grotesque enough figure with the long robe streaming at his heels, his head surmounted by the fantastic turban, and his face roughened with two days’ beard, but he made something of a pathetic appeal, too. He was putting up a good fight. It took only half an eye to see that he was running on his nerve and that in his eagerness to get clear, there was nothing of cowardice. Even now there was not one of the rabble who dared come within fighting distance of him. It was the harrying they enjoyed–the sight of a man tormented. A policeman elbowed his way through the crowd and instead of clubbing back the aggressors, pushed on to the young man who was tottering near his finish.
Wilson saw him. He gave one last hurried look about on the chance of finding some loophole of escape from that which was worse than the crowd. His eyes fell upon the face of a young man in an automobile which was moving slowly up the hill. It took the latter but a glance to see that Wilson was a gentleman hard pushed. The appeal in the eyes was enough. He ordered the machine stopped and threw open the door. As Wilson reached it, he leaned forward and grasped his shoulders, dragging him in. Then the driver threw back his lever and the machine leaped forward like an unleashed dog. The officer ordered them to stop, but they skimmed on up the hill and turning to the left found Beacon Street a straight path before them.
“Narrow squeak that time, old man,” smiled the stranger. “What the devil was the trouble?”
“This, I suppose,” answered Wilson, as soon as he had caught his breath, lifting a corner of the elaborate gown. “And this,” touching the bandages on his head.
“But what in thunder did they chase you for?”
“I guess they thought I was crazy–or drunk.”
“Well, it wasn’t fair sport at a hundred to one. Where shall I land you?”
Wilson pondered a second. He would only lose time if he got out and attempted again to find the house in that rig.
“If–if I could only get some clothes.”
“Where’s your hotel or home? Take you anywhere you say.”
“I haven’t either a home or a hotel,” answered Wilson, deliberately. “And these are all the clothes I have in the world.”
“Is that a dream?”
“It is the truth.”
“But how–” exclaimed the other.
“I can’t tell you now how it came about, but it is the truth that I am without a cent, and that this is my entire wardrobe.”
“Where did you come from this morning?” asked the other, still incredulous.
“From the hospital.”
Wilson hesitated just a second; he knew that in asking anything further he ran the risk of being mistaken for a charlatan, but this seemed now his only chance of getting back to her. They were speeding out through the Fenway, but the driver had now slowed down to await further orders. The man would drop him anywhere he said, but even supposing he brought him back to the vicinity of the house, he could not possibly escape observation long enough to locate that little door in the rear–the only clue he had to identification of the house. If ever a man’s exterior gave promise of generous help, the features of this fellow by his side did. He was of about his own age, smooth shaven, with a frank, open face that gave him a clean and wholesome appearance. He had the lithe frame and red cheeks of an athlete in training–his eyes clear as night air, his teeth white as a hound’s. But it was a trick of the eyes which decided Wilson–a bright eagerness tinged with humor and something of dreams, which suggested that he himself was alert for just such adventures as this in which Wilson found himself. He glanced up and found the other studying him curiously as though trying to decide