Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/349

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as he had proudly boasted to her that he would wait. Now he dared not reveal himself; he could only stand a moment and yearn for her with more exquisite pain than ever, waft her a kiss that she must not see, lift above her bent head a prayer of which she could not know, and then slip away to set himself about that other important piece of business which had led him first to leave his cell and make a perilous way downward to the ground by the route which Adam John had taken.

For this next enterprise Henry needed high-powered transportation and the parking space behind Humboldt House was full of it. By a circuitous movement he was quickly among these cars. Selecting one with a full tank and ignition key in place, he felt justified in commandeering it. Forty miles away was a vast army encampment, a divisional headquarters, with warchouses full of supplies and barracks full of able-bodied men, and just before three o'clock of that fiery morning, Harrington, having driven as he had never driven before, drew up before the sentry at the main gate entrance. Something that he said to the sentry brought the officer of the guard quickly. Something that he said to the officer of the guard caused that functionary to hurry past another sentry to an orderly dozing outside the door of a man who wore two stars on his collar when not sound asleep in his pajamas, as he was at the present moment.

"Who? What!" roared the general, when his orderly, by the Pullman porter's expedient of plucking at the sheet, had twigged him into wakefulness. "Who? . . . Hellfire Harrington! Wants to see me? Well, why the devil don't you bring him in here? What do you keep him waiting for?"