CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LAST LAP

The night would never pass, it seemed, yet slowly the hours of darkness crept onward. To Jerry and Bob, first one and then the other, crouched in the cramped motor compartment, holding the string of the tension spring, which alone kept the machinery in motion, the sixty minutes in each hour seemed like sixty thousand.

They had passed from the lake into the river, and but a comparatively few miles now separated them from the place where the auto had been left. The land part of their journey would take them until nearly night, they calculated.

It was now fully light, and still they sped on. Neither of them could desert his post. Jerry managed, by lashing the steering wheel, to snatch a few moments during which he rushed into the galley, and set the coffee to boiling. Then he was back at the helm again, for the boat was driving herself on shore.

The two chums ate a hasty meal at their posts, Bob in the motor room, Jerry at the wheel.

It was shortly before noon when they guided the _Scud_ up to Kroll’s boat dock, and as they made their craft fast, and scrambled out, taking only a few belongings with them, one of the workmen cried:

“What’s your hurry? What’s the matter?”

“Can’t stop to tell now,” Jerry shouted back over his shoulder. “Fix the boat up--mend that valve spring and have her ready for a dash some time late to-night or early to-morrow morning!”

There was no delay at the place where the auto had been left. Fortunately the gasoline and oil tanks were filled, and explaining to the garage keeper their need of haste the two chums were off again.

On and on they rushed. The first part of the auto trip was over good roads, and for this the boys were thankful. It was about a hundred miles to Brookville, where they hoped to find Dr. Wright. They had about five hours of daylight in which to make it and it would need an average speed of twenty miles an hour to cover this.

“If we can reach Brookville by supper time, and persuade Dr. Wright to come back with us, we ought to get back to the boat some time in the early morning,” Jerry calculated. “That will give us a long day to make the trip back to camp.”

“Yes, if nothing happens,” Bob assented.

“Nothing must happen!” cried Jerry fiercely.

And, for a time, all went well. Then, when they had covered a bad bit of road, and reached a smooth stretch, and when Jerry had put on full speed, there came a sharp explosion.

“Back fire?” questioned Bob.

“Blow-out!” said Jerry, with a grim tightening of his lips, as he felt the car skidding under the stress of the collapsed tire.

Jerry brought the machine up with a jerk, and was out on the ground almost before it had stopped.

“Come on!” he cried grimly to his chum. “Got to put on a new shoe.”

It was not easy work, and it seemed as though it took them longer than usual, as it always does when one is in a hurry. But, doubtless, they worked with their usual speed.

Once more they were off again, and kept on speeding. They halted at a country store to get some crackers and a box of herring, also some bottled soda water to relieve their thirst. They ate on the run, glad enough to get their meal that way.

Then a puncture delayed them, but working with feverish haste, they managed to get in a new tube. Then, tired, with aching muscles, and covered with the oil from the motor boat, as well as the dust of the road, they swung into Brookville, and sent the car around a turn on two wheels, into the hotel driveway.

Once more Jerry was out almost before the vehicle had ceased rolling. Bob followed him more slowly into the corridor of the hotel.

“Dr. Wright--is he here--yet?” panted Jerry to the clerk.

That functionary looked up in surprise, and not a little suspicion at the grimy and disheveled figure before him.

“Yes, Dr. Wright is here,” was the slow answer, “but I don’t know that he will see you. He is----”

“Oh, yes, he’ll see us,” said Jerry confidently. “Don’t you remember us? We were here before. This is Bob Baker, whom Dr. Wright treated, and----”

“Oh, yes. Of course! Now I know you. I didn’t at first because you----”

“No apologies necessary,” interrupted Jerry.

Dr. Wright had evidently not forgotten the motor boys, for he came down at once on receipt of the message.

“Why, Jerry!” he exclaimed, and then he drew back in surprise at the sight of his visitor.

Jerry plunged into the story of the professor’s accident. He made it as clear as he could, but it was rather an incoherent story, for all that. Bob put in a word now and then.

“But do I understand you want me to travel with you away up into the wilderness of the mountains--to a lonely hut, and there perform a delicate operation on Professor Snodgrass?” asked Dr. Wright, slowly.

“That’s it,” said Jerry.

“Go with you in your automobile and motor boat?”

“There’s no other way,” responded Jerry, quietly. “No railroad will take us there any quicker. And we must start at once. Here is the note Dr. Brown told me to give you.”

The great surgeon stretched out his hand for the paper. As he read it a different look came over his face. It was as though he were a general receiving news that he was about to take part in some important engagement.

“Ah,” he murmured, “the DeVerne operation,” for it was so named after its discoverer, and Dr. Wright was a pupil of that famous French surgeon. “Yes, that is the only hope in a case like that. Dr. Brown was fortunate in so quickly recognizing the necessity for it. Ah, yes, indeed,” and Dr. Wright seemed lost in a pleasant professional revery.

“Then you’ll come?” asked Jerry. “We want to save his life, doctor--save the life of Professor Snodgrass.”

“Yes, I’ll come!” exclaimed the great surgeon. “I have heard of your Professor Snodgrass. I honor him as a true disciple of science. I would do anything in my power to aid him, but,” and his voice grew more solemn, “I do not promise to save his life.”

He shrugged his shoulders to express his doubt. And then the spirit of the soldier--of the fighter--came back to him. Indeed it had not deserted him. He merely did not wish to raise false hopes.

“Come!” he cried. “We will go. I will get ready at once. I will need--let me see----” and he began to go over in his mind the things he would need, as a general might before undertaking a decisive engagement.

Unseen by the boys, Miss Payson, the nurse, came down. She saw the doctor, and she must have known what his attitude, and his words, meant.

“Doctor! You’re not going out to-night--on a case!” she exclaimed. “You forget you came here for rest. You----”

“I forget nothing, my dear Miss Payson,” he interrupted, with a smile. “I only know that I am a doctor, and that a friend--a patient--needs me. You will please get my case ready, and prepare yourself. We are about to perform the DeVerne operation.”

“The DeVerne operation!” she gasped. “Here--now?”

“Not here and now. In a lonely cabin, away up in the mountains. We shall have to travel all night, by auto and part of to-morrow by boat. But it can be done--it shall be done! These young men have come to call me to save the life of Professor Snodgrass. So we will go.

“You will please see that everything is ready. Remember we shall need many things, so do not omit any. Tell my sister. She will go with us. You will need relief if you are to nurse this case. Ah, the DeVerne operation!” and the doctor rubbed his hands as though he welcomed the surgical knot he must soon loosen.

“Very well, doctor,” answered Miss Payson. Evidently she knew when she had sufficiently objected.

“I will be with you inside of an hour,” Dr. Wright told Jerry. “Certain preparations must be made. Meanwhile you had better rest and refresh yourselves. Have you room to carry three of us? My sister will go along as assistant nurse to Miss Payson.”

“We have plenty of room,” replied Jerry, quietly. “We will be ready for you in an hour.”

The preparations of the two youths were simple. They washed in the hotel lavatory, and ate--Bob especially doing the latter. Then, as they had a night auto trip before them, they carefully examined every part of the machine. The tires were blown up afresh, a thorough oiling was given to every part, and, in addition to the main gasoline tank being filled, an extra five-gallon can was taken along.

Punctual to the minute was Dr. Wright. He had with him a bag of instruments, and other things needful for the operation. Miss Payson and Miss Wright were carrying valises containing their personal belongings.

“We are ready, boys,” said the great surgeon, calmly. “From now, until we reach the cabin, we are in your hands.”

“And we’ll get you there,” promised Jerry.

None of those who participated in that night ride ever forgot it. Shortly after starting from the hotel in Brookville it began to rain, and the storm increased in violence until at midnight it was blowing a gale, and the rain was coming down in torrents.

“Can we go on?” asked Dr. Wright, calmly, from within the well-enclosed tonneau.

“The machine can,” said Jerry, wondering what the doctor meant.

“And if the machine can, we can,” was the reassuring reply.

The powerful lights marked out the muddy and sloppy road that lay ahead of them. Fortunately Jerry had been over it twice and he was pretty familiar with it now. He drove on cautiously enough, but at a pace that brought from Miss Payson and Miss Wright exclamations of alarm now and then. As for Dr. Wright, he betrayed no fear whatever. He sat silent in one corner of the big car.

“Will we be in time? Will we be in time?” was the question that ran through Jerry’s mind continually.

That every moment counted he well knew from the look on the face of Dr. Wright as he read the note Dr. Brown had written. Professor Snodgrass was in imminent danger. That much was certain. Could he be operated on in time? Could he be given back the life that was so fast slipping away, long enough to make the disclosure he had hinted at in his delirium--a disclosure that would prove the fraud of those who had taken the land from Mrs. Hopkins? Jerry asked himself those questions.

On and on they lurched in the auto. Now they glided down some slippery hill, now they climbed the opposite slope, with all power on.

It was raining hard when a faint streak of light in the east showed that the dawn was trying to break. It was still raining when they headed for the shipyard.

“We had better stop and have some breakfast,” suggested Dr. Wright, and when Jerry looked a little dubious at the delay the surgeon said: “We shall all be better for it, and able to make better time. We must be in good shape for what lies before us. We must neglect nothing.”

They ate at a little restaurant near the dock. Probably never before had the great Dr. Wright--the New York specialist on whose nod millionaires waited--dined in such a humble place. But he made no comment, nor did his sister or the nurse. It was a case of emergency, and they all recognized it.

“Is she all right?” asked Jerry of the man at the dock, as they went down, through the drizzling rain, to where the _Scud_ lay moored.

“Right as a trivet, sir!” was the answer.

“All aboard!” called Jerry. “We’re on the last lap, now!”

“And none too soon,” murmured Dr. Wright, as he again read the note from Dr. Brown, giving the nature of the injury and the symptoms of Professor Snodgrass. “None too soon. Speed her all you can, Jerry!”

“I will; yes, sir,” was the low answer.

The motor hummed and throbbed as the _Scud_ swung away from the pier and out into Silver River.

Would they be in time?

Over and over again the chugging motor seemed to say to Jerry:

“Will we be in time? Will we be in time? In time--in time?”