Part 8 (1/2)

THE TWINS MEET BRUCE

Chance Carter, lying helpless on the stone steps of Turner Hall, was wondering if the doctor would ever come. Bob and George did their best to ease his pain, while Betty gazed anxiously down the street.

”Why doesn't that doctor come?”

”Surely he knows where we are, Betty?”

”Yes, I told him Turner Hall, and he said, 'Why, Turner Hall burned down last night, little girl.' And I told him I knew it, and that we were waiting right beside what was left of it.”

”Hm-m-m! Something must have happened to him then; he could have walked it in less time than this. If he doesn't come pretty soon, we'd better call up the police department and have them send the ambulance. We can't wait here much longer.”

While they waited, an idea popped into Bob's head.

”Look here,” he said, ”somebody else is likely enough to get hurt here, just the way Chance did. I believe we'd better put up a sign. I'll get some paper from that store.”

So Bob hurried around to the store and got some wrapping paper and nails and borrowed a pencil and hammer. He worked fast, the shopkeeper looking curiously over his shoulder while he lettered this sign:

DANGER!

These walls may fall on you any moment. One leg already broken here today. Keep out.

SAFETY FIRST!

Bob had just finished the lettering when a big automobile came purring along in front of the ruined building. The chauffeur was in uniform. The big man inside looked almost lost among the cus.h.i.+ons, so roomy was the machine. At a word from him, the car slowed down, and he scanned the ruins sharply. Bob knew him in a moment for Bruce, the great mill owner, one of the richest men in the city.

”h.e.l.lo, what's this? What's this?” Bruce stood up in the car when the little group on the steps caught his eye. In a twinkling he was out of the automobile and bending over the groaning boy, while Bob and George and Betty told him what had happened.

”Tut, tut!” snapped the great man whose mills gave work to thousands of men, the twins' father among them. ”This won't do at all! If the doctor won't come to him, we must get him to the doctor.” Pus.h.i.+ng aside the chauffeur, he lifted Chance into the car and on to the deep, comfortable cus.h.i.+ons as easily as if he had been a child of two instead of a lad of twelve and big for his age.

”Now, jump in, the rest of you,” he said, ”and we'll take him over to Doctor MacArthur's.”

Betty climbed in and George followed. The chauffeur took his seat and looked around at Bob, waiting. ”What's the matter now?” asked Bruce, impatiently, as Bob lingered on the step.

”It's those walls,” answered the boy. ”I hate to leave them in that shape--somebody else will be getting hurt just as Chance did. I'd better put up the sign. You folks go on, please, and I'll follow on foot.”

The mill owner shook his head. ”Put up your sign and come along. We'll wait.”

Bruce looked sharply at Bob's sign as the boy nailed it up in place, but said nothing. Bob climbed into the waiting automobile, and the big machine rolled smoothly, silently to the doctor's office.

Doctor MacArthur, surgeon's case in hand, came out. He was a little gray man--gray-haired, dressed in a gray suit, with keen gray eyes that seemed to take in everything at once.

”Who put those splints on?” He jerked out the words like a pistol shot.

”I did,” said Bob, reddening; for the doctor's tone made him feel that he must have bungled his work.

Swiftly the doctor bared the leg and laid a deft finger on the exact spot of the break. ”Simple fracture,” was his verdict. ”Bone badly splintered, though--would have come through the skin in short order if you hadn't got the splints on when you did. Where does he live?”