free!

The clock struck again.

Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and
pressed them upon Webb.

"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want!
And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an
explanation that may help you with them. I wish you good-day."

To get out! To get out! He burst through the portieres and the door,
as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it
from without. In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one
sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and
terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes
fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with
his snake-like eye. Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in
the room and the group dissolved.

Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode
down the corridor. He threw himself on the outside door and as he
opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the
great clock strike eleven. With a shudder he plunged across the
threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.

THE LEGACY

Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody
believes this or not. It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that
I'm writing it, anyway. And nobody needs to get the idea that I think
I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that. But there's not
a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over
her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too. Not that he's cocky about
it, though.

"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of
the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back,
while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."

"Style be damned," he said. "You're long on facts, and that's all I
want, my dear. And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that
C----r's rot on me!"

I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it. I
took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix
removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always
insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that. But of
course they weren't.

"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own
language. I'd like to keep it."

And of course anybody can do that. Although Mr. C----r told me o