"Since you're awake," he said, "you may as
well have one extra bath to send you back to sleep."
The head on the pillow signified unwillingness. "I'd take one to please
my red-headed doctor, but not you."
"You'd do anything for him, eh?" questioned Burns, his eyes on the chart
which the nurse had brought him and upon which she was throwing the
light of a small flash. "Well, you see he wants you to have this bath;
he told me so."
"Very well, then," she said with a sigh. "But I don't like them. They
make me shiver."
"I know it. But they're good for you. They keep your red-headed doctor
master of the situation. You want him to be that, don't you?"
"He'd be that anyway," said she confidently.
Burns smiled, but the smile faded quickly. He gave a few brief
directions, then slipped away as quietly as he had come.
* * * * *
It was well into the next week when one morning he encountered Jordan
King, who had been out of town for several days. King came up to him
eagerly. Since this meeting occurred just outside the hospital, where
Burns's car had been standing in its accustomed place for the last hour,
it might not have been a wholly accidental encounter.
King made no attempt to maneuver for information. Maneuvering with Red
Pepper Burns, as the young man was well aware, seldom served any
purpose but to subject the artful one to a straight exposure. He asked
his question abruptly.
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