Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/297

"He's dined at my house in Paris," Mr. Brant threw in, as if trying to justify himself.

"Oh, go—go!" Campton almost pushed him down the stairs. Ten minutes later he reappeared, modest but exultant.

"Well?"

"He wouldn't commit himself, before the others———"

"Oh———"

"But to me, as he was getting into the motor———"

"Well?"

"Yes: if possible. Somewhere about midnight."

Campton turned away, choking, and stumped off toward the tall window at the end of the passage. Below him lay the court. A line of stretchers was being carried across it, not empty this time, but each one with a bloody burden. Doctors, nurses, orderlies hurried to and fro. Drub, drub, drub, went the guns, shaking the windows, rolling their fierce din along the cloudy sky, down the corridors of the hospital and the pavement of the streets, like huge bowls crashing through story above story of a kind of sky-scraping bowling alley.

"Even the dead underground must hear them!" Campton muttered.

The word made him shudder superstitiously, and he crept back to George's door and opened it; but the nurse, within, shook her head.