as Oliver turned from the cage.

"I'm truly sorry, Mr. Furnay," Oliver apologized. "If there's anything
I can do ... a dressing for Bivins' leg--"

Mr. Furnay gathered himself with an effort. "It is nothing, a scratch
that will heal quickly. But my bear--you will come to see him at
once?"

At another time, the thought of absenting himself without due notice
to his Aunt Katisha and Glenna would have prompted Oliver to refuse;
but the present moment called more for diplomacy than for convention.
Better to suffer matriarchal displeasure, he thought, than to risk a
damage suit by a millionaire.

"I'll come at once," Oliver said. "I owe you that, I think, after the
fright Champ gave you."

And, belatedly, the realization that he might handle a bear--a great,
live, lumbering bear!--surged up inside him to titillate his old
boyhood yearning. Perhaps it was as well that his aunt and sister were
away; this chance to exercise his natural skill at dealing with
animals was too precious to decline.

"Of course I won't guarantee a cure," Oliver said, qualifying his
promise, "because I've never diagnosed such a case. But I think I can
help your bear."

Oddly enough, he _was_ almost sure that he could. Oliver, in his
younger days, had read a great deal on the care and treatment of
circus animals, and the symptoms in this instance had a familiar
sound. Mr. Furnay's bear, he thought, in all probability had worms.

The Furnay town car purred away, leaving Oliver to marvel at his own
daring while he collected the instruments and medicines he might need.

[Illustration]

In leaving the clinic he noted that Mr. Furnay's chauffeur had
dropped his handkerchief at the doorway in his hurry to be gone--but
Oliver by this time was in too great a hurry to stop and retrieve it.

His Aunt Katisha might spoil the whole adventure on the instant with a
telephone call from Tampa. Bivins could wait.

* * * * *

The drive, after a day spent in the antiseptic confines of his clinic,
was like a holiday jaunt.

The late June sun was hot and bright, the rows of suburban houses trim
and clean as scrubbed children sunning themselves among color-splashed
crotons and hibiscus and flaming poincianas. Oliver whistled gaily as
he turned his little white-paneled call truck off the highway and
drove between twin ranks of shedding cabbage palms toward the iron
gates of the Furnay estate.

A uniformed gateman who might h