"I didn't get around to this business until now, but two other men were found in Grant Park. Like this. They were taken to private hospitals." "Good Lord!" the doctor breathed, startled. "This goes deeper than I thought. There must be something in Grant Park--" "Something that I intend to look into," Bryan said quietly. "There's a story here--if I can dig it out." He thrust the envelope and pencil back into his jacket, together with the slip of paper he had been given. "I'll be running along, Dave. Thanks for your tip. It was swell of you to remember me." The other gestured as he followed Bryan into the hall and toward the elevators. "Maybe I had an ulterior motive. Ruth and I have been wondering why you never drop in any more." "I've been running a rat-race," Bryan said. "You look it, Terry. You don't look as well as you did when you first came back from overseas." "What a big medicine bottle you have, doc!" "I'm serious, Terry. I've had an idea you weren't happy about things, and now I'm sure of it. What seems to be the trouble? Your job?" "The job's all right." "You won't tell an old friend?" Bryan lifted his hands. "Hell, Dave, I don't know just what is wrong. But it might be something like this. I fought a little war of my own, a personal war, to make the world a better place. Now that I'm back, though, it's the same old world--only a lot worse. And a reporter gets to see too much of the worse side." "One man can't change the world, Terry," the doctor said. "All he can do it make the best of his small piece of it.... What you need to do is to get married and raise a family. And while on the subject, what became of that pretty girl reporter you brought around with you a couple of times?" "Joyce? She's still with the paper." "She seemed like a sensible person. Make a nice wife." "Yes," Bryan said. He stopped in front of the elevator and held out his hand. "Thanks again, Dave. I'll drop in some evening, when the rat-race slows up a little. My love to Ruth." "Take care of yourself, Terry." The doctor stood watching as the elevator doors closed on Bryan's figure. A worried frown deepened the lines in his forehead. * * * * * Outside, on the sidewalk before the hospital, Bryan lighted a cigarette. He stood there for some minutes, a big man in a rumpled tweed suit, his hat pushed back on thick brown hair that had a coppery glint in the bright sunshine. He had powerful shoulders, and the hands that went with them, but his face was fine-carved and sensitive--the face of an artist, or a dreamer. There was that paradox in him. And in that paradox was his personal tragedy. For while his strength took him easily through the deceit and cruelty of life, the stupidity and ugliness, the memory of each encounter remained with him like a scar. The scars were beginning to show a bit too plainly. It had taken Dave to make him realize that.