"I'll bet she doesn't talk about right angles to him," thought Peter. For a moment he considered pursuit, but before he could make up his mind the taxicab had started. It swept past him no more than ten feet away. He could see the red head of the woman in the window. One week later he decided that he should have cupped his hands and shouted, "You hypotenuse hussy!" That night he could think of nothing. The fragments of glass lay about him. Peter examined them and found it had been a champagne bottle. After a bit he called a taxicab for himself and said, "Go to some hospital that's near." He had begun to feel a little faint. A doctor in the reception room dug the glass out of Peter's scalp bit by bit and hurt him dreadfully. Every stab of pain cut through the fumes and left him clear-headed. Nothing was forgotten any more. He was able to compare the relative poignancy of two sorts of pain and decided that he did not care much how long the doctor kept it up. At last the job was finished and Peter's head bandaged. "You were drunk, weren't you?" said the doctor. "Yes," said Peter, "I was." There was no other comment. Nobody would call Peter Sir Galahad on account of this fight and yet it was honorable enough he thought, even if the issues were a little mixed. Nor was it entirely unsatisfactory. At least he had been able to taunt Fate into an overt act. He knew a poem by a man who wrote, "My head is bloody but unbowed." Peter had often used that line in prizefight stories. Still he was a little sick now and perfectly sober. He looked at his watch. In an hour or so it would be dawn. There didn't seem to be anything to do but go home. Opening the door of his apartment, Peter tripped over something in the dark and fell with a bang. Kate woke and called out in obvious terror, "Who's there?" "It's only me," said Peter, "Mr. Neale. I decided not to stay out after all. I'm sorry I woke you up. I fell over the baby carriage." CHAPTER IX Somebody at the office must have heard about the flight of Maria Algarez, for when Peter returned from Goldfield he had found at his flat a telegram which said, "Lay off a couple of weeks. Longer if you like--Miles, managing editor." That was an extraordinary thing because the material for Peter's column--"Looking Them Over with Peter Neale"--was only up one week ahead. A two weeks' vacation would mean not only that there would be no Peter Neale in the Bulletin, but that in thirty-one other papers throughout the country the feature would be missing. Peter wondered how Miles could suggest a thing like that so calmly. Maria's running away ought not to wrench a whole chain of newspapers in that fashion. In daydreams Peter had often pictured himself dying from flood, or earthquake or a stray bullet in some great riot. When the rescuers picked him up and bent over to hear what he might say his lips framed the words, "Send a story to the Bulletin!"