winking and making
horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on.
Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow
he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be
painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the
composition of her face is all wrong."

He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every
other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the
littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of
fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from
the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last
terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door.

Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone.

"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar
and watch me. I--I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He
gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down."

"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill
and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some
macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes."

Sid aggrievedly obeyed.

CHAPTER XXXII

ON FINLAKE MOUNTAIN

Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride
in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees.
Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the
chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor
and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours
he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside
him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He
drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more
care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep
him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a
road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once,
cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a
circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing.
The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety
trees.

At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights
blazed upon the quarry.

"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me."

"We leave the car here?"

"We'll have to." He turned his