Five miles into the country they ran, and King soon guessed that their destination might be Sunny Farm, a home for crippled children which was Ellen Burns’s special charity, established by herself on a small scale a few years before and greatly grown since in its size and usefulness.  Burns was its head surgeon and its devoted patron, and he was accustomed to do much operative work in its well-equipped surgery, bringing out cases which he found in the city slums or among the country poor, with total disregard for any considerations except those of need and suffering.  King knew that the place and the work were dearer to the hearts of both Doctor and Mrs. Burns than all else outside their own home, and he began to understand that if anything had gone wrong with affairs there Red Pepper would be sure to take it seriously.

Quite as he had foreseen—­since there were few homes on this road, which ran mostly through thickly wooded country—­the car rushed on to the big farmhouse, lying low and long in the night, with pleasant lights twinkling from end to end.  Burns brought up with a jerk beside the central porch, leaped out, and disappeared inside without a word of explanation to his companion, who sat wondering and looking in through the open door to the wide hall which ran straight through the house to more big porches on the farther side.

Everything was very quiet at this hour, according to the rules of the place, all but the oldest patients being in bed and asleep by eight o’clock.  Therefore when, after an interval, voices became faintly audible, there was nothing to prevent their reaching the occupant of the car.

In a front room upstairs at one side of the hall two people were speaking, and presently through the open window Burns was heard to say with incisive sternness:  “I’ll give you exactly ten minutes to pack your bag and go—­and I’ll take you—­to make sure you do go.”

A woman’s voice, in a sort of deep-toned wail, answered:  “You aren’t fair to me, Doctor Burns; you aren’t fair!  You—­”

“Fair!” The word was a growl of suppressed thunder.  “Don’t talk of fairness—­you!  You don’t know the meaning of the word.  You haven’t been fair to a single kid under this roof, or to a nurse—­or to any one of us—­you with your smiles—­and your hypocrisy—­you who can’t be trusted.  That’s the name for you—­She-Who-Can’t-Be-Trusted.  Go pack that bag, Mrs. Soule; I won’t hear another word!”

“Oh, Doctor—­”

“Go, I said!”

Outside, in the car, Jordan King understood that if the person to whom Burns was speaking had not been a woman that command of his might have been accompanied by physical violence, and the offending one more than likely have been ejected from the door by the thrust of two vigorous hands on his shoulders.  There was that in Burns’s tone—­all that and more.  His wrath was quite evidently no explosion of the moment, but the culmination of long irritation and distrust, brought to a head by some overt act which had settled the offender’s case in the twinkling of an eye.