e floor waiting to be kicked by a pair of legs that had no
body and that tormented him by dancing a jig to the rhythm of a
sing-song rendition of "Gunga Din."

When the bodiless legs disappeared he found himself mingling in an
every-day Spring street crowd with a towel turban stained with blood, on
his head and wondering why none paid the slightest attention to him or
his strange headgear. Alma Sprockett stopped him at a corner and begged
him not to tell something he knew nothing of, and he promised her he
wouldn't tell and went on his way racking his brain to remember what she
had said to him.

A life-size photograph of Consuello came to life, stepped out of its
frame in a theater lobby and sailed through a casement window bordered
with red geraniums until it reached the top of a hill, marked with a
sign board, on which were the words, "Green and Friendly." He sat at her
feet on the hilltop and told her all the earth was servant to just the
two of them. They were supremely happy sitting there, for days and weeks
and years, until a crimson rain fell and a terrible thunder roared.
Bolts of lightning crashed all around him and a splinter from one of the
bolts was imbedded in his eye and his head began to ache, and then--

He opened his eyes. He was in a bed at the receiving hospital. Putting a
hand to his face he felt a bandage over the cut in his cheek, made by
Louie's black-jack, and gauze, held in place by strips of adhesive tape,
covering the laceration over his eyes made by Joe's brass knuckles. His
right hand was in a stiff, straight bandage, the fingers held flat by
splints. Brennan and the chief surgeon were standing at his bedside.

"Hello," he said and his voice sounded far away from him.

"Hello," said Brennan, "how are you feeling?"

"My head aches," he said.

"You'll be all right," said the surgeon. "You fainted from nervous
exhaustion and loss of blood and we brought you down here and fixed you
up. You cracked two knuckles of your right hand and you have lacerations
that we sutured on your forehead and your cheek. You can get up as soon
as you feel strong enough."

"What time is it?" he asked.

"It's a little after midnight," Brennan replied, as the surgeon left the
room.

"Tell me," he asked, "how did it happen that you got there in time to
save me?"

"I telephoned to P. Q. after dinner to tell him that I had Ben Smith's
transcript and he told me about Murphy," Brennan explained. "He told me
t