Red Pepper Burns | Page 4

dimly lighted village offices of Redfield Pepper Burns, physician and surgeon. Not that the gilt-lettered sign on the glass of the office door read that way. "R. F. Burns, M.D." was the brief inscription above the table of "office hours," and the owner of the name invariably so curtailed it. But among his friends the full name had inevitably been turned into the nickname, for the big, red-haired, quick-tempered, warm-hearted fellow was "Red Pepper Burns" as irresistibly to them as he had been, a decade earlier, to his classmates in college.
As Chester went in at the door a figure arose slowly from its position - flung full length, face downward, on a couch in the shadowy inner office and came into view.
"Toothache? Dentist down the street," said a blurred voice unsympathetically.
Chester laughed. "Oh, come, Red," said he. "Give me some of that headache dope. I'm all out."
"Glad to hear it. You don't get any more from me."
"Why not? I've got a sure-enough headache - I didn't come over to quiz you. The blamed thing whizzes like a buzz saw."
"Can't help it. Go soak it."
Chester advanced. "I'll get the powders myself, then. I know the bottle."
A substantial barrier interposed. "No, you don't. You've taken up six ounces of that stuff do seven days. You quit to-night."
"Look here, Red, what's the use of taking it out on me like that, if you are mad at something? If your head - "
"I wish it did ache - like ten thousand furies. It might take some of the pressure off somewhere else," growled R. P. Burns. He shut the door of the inner office hard behind him.
"I thought so," declared Arthur Chester, suddenly forgetting about his headache in his anxiety to know the explanation of the five cylinders. It was a small suburban town in which they lived, and if something had gone wrong it was a matter of common interest. "Can you tell me about it ?" he asked - a little diffidently, for none knew better than he that things could not always be told, and that no lips were locked tighter than Red Pepper's when the secret was not his to tell.
"Engine's on the blink. Got to go out and fix it," was the unpromising reply. Burns picked up a sparkplug from the office desk as he spoke.
"Had your dinner?"
"Don't want it."
"Shall I go out with you?"
The answer was an unintelligible grunt. As Chester was about to follow his friend out - for there could be no doubt that Red Pepper Burns was his friend in spite of this somewhat surly, though by no means unusual, treatment - another door opened tentatively, and a head was cautiously inserted.
"Your dinner's ready, Doctor Burns," said a doubtful voice.
Burns turned. "Leave a pitcher of milk on the table for me, Cynthia," he said in a gentler voice than Chester had yet heard from him tonight, crisp though it was. "Nothing else."
Chester, catching a glimpse of a brightly lighted dining-room and a table lavishly spread, undertook to remonstrate. He had seen the housekeeper's disappointed face, also. But Burns cut him short.
"Come along - if you must," said he, and stalked out into the night.
For an hour, in the light from one of the Green Imp's lamps, Chester sat on an overturned box and watched Burns work. He worked savagely, as if applying surgical measures to a mood as well as to a machine. He worked like a skilled mechanic as well; every turn of a nut, every polish of a thread meaning definite means to an end. The night was hot and he had thrown off coat and collar and rolled his sleeves high, so a brawny arm gleamed in the bright lamplight, and the open shirt exposed a powerful neck. Chester, who was of slighter build and not as tall as he would have liked to be, watched enviously.
"Whatever goes wrong with your affairs, Red," he observed suddenly, breaking a long interval during which the engine had been made to throb and whirl like the "ten thousand furies" to whom its engineer had lately made allusion, "you have the tremendous asset of a magnificent body to fall back on for comfort."
With a movement of the hand Burns stopped his engine, now running quietly, and stood up straight. He threw out one bare arm, grimy and oily with his labours. "Two hours ago," said he in a voice now controlled and solemn, "if by cutting off that right arm at the shoulder I could have saved a human life I'd have done it."
"And now," retorted Chester quickly, "now, two hours after - would you cut it off now?"
Red Pepper looked at him. The arm dropped. "No," said he, "I wouldn't. Not for a dozen lives like that. I'm not heroic, after all - only hot