His Great Adventure
come!”

Brainard did not yet take very seriously the idea of starting that night for San Francisco to rifle a safe.

“Mo-mo-money,” the voice began, and the p. 16eyes wandered to the fat wallet which Brainard had deposited on the table.

p. 16

Brainard lifted the wallet.

“Plen-plen-plenty of mon-money!”

“I understand,” the young man replied. “There’s enough cash for the journey in here.”

As he laid the wallet down, there was the welcome sound of feet in the passage outside, and with an exclamation of relief the young man flung open the door. The ambulance surgeon was there with an assistant and a stretcher. With a muttered explanation for his delay, the doctor went at once to the sick man and examined him, while Brainard told what he knew of his strange guest.

“Tries to talk all the time—must be something on his mind!” he said, as another convulsion seized the sick man. “Been doped, I should say.”

“Looks like brain trouble, sure,” the ambulance surgeon remarked, watching the stranger closely. “He can’t last long that way. Well, we’d better hustle him to the hospital as soon as we can.”

They had the sick man on the stretcher before he had opened his eyes from his last attack. As they lifted him, he mumbled excitedly, and Brainard, listening close to his lips, thought he understood what was troubling him.

p. 17“He wants that paper witnessed,” he explained. “I forgot—it’s something he dictated to me.”

p. 17

“Well, hurry up about it,” the surgeon replied carelessly, willing to humor the sick man. “Here!”

Brainard dipped his pen in the ink-bottle and handed it to the surgeon, who lightly dashed down his signature at the bottom of the sheet, without reading it.

“Now are we ready?” the doctor demanded impatiently.


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