第61章

The hall was full of smoke and its air seemed greasy with the odor of frying.She found that dinner was about to be served.Agirl in blue calico skirt and food-smeared, sweat-discolored blue jersey ushered her to one of the tables in the dining-room.

"There's a gentleman comin'," said she."I'll set him down with you.He won't bite, I don't reckon, and there ain't no use mussin' up two tables."There was no protesting against two such arguments; so Susan presently had opposite her a fattish man with long oily hair and a face like that of a fallen and dissipated preacher.She recognized him at once as one of those wanderers who visit small towns with cheap shows or selling patent medicines and doing juggling tricks on the street corners in the flare of a gasoline lamp.She eyed him furtively until he caught her at it--he being about the same business himself.Thereafter she kept her eyes steadily upon the tablecloth, patched and worn thin with much washing.Soon the plate of each was encircled by the familiar arc of side dishes containing assorted and not very appetizing messes--fried steak, watery peas, stringy beans, soggy turnips, lumpy mashed potatoes, a perilous-looking chicken stew, cornbread with streaks of baking soda in it.But neither of the diners was critical, and the dinner was eaten with an enthusiasm which the best rarely inspires.

With the prunes and dried-apple pie, the stranger expanded.

"Warm day, miss," he ventured.

"Yes, it is a little warm," said Susan.She ventured a direct look at him.Above the pleasant, kindly eyes there was a brow so unusually well shaped that it arrested even her young and untrained attention.Whatever the man's character or station, there could be no question as to his intelligence.

"The flies are very bothersome," continued he."But nothing like Australia.There the flies have to be picked off, and they're big, and they bite--take a piece right out of you.The natives used to laugh at us when we were in the ring and would try to brush, em away." The stranger had the pleasant, easy manner of one who through custom of all kinds of people and all varieties of fortune, has learned to be patient and good-humored--to take the day and the hour as the seasoned gambler takes the cards that are dealt him.

Susan said nothing; but she had listened politely.The man went on amusing himself with his own conversation."I was in the show business then.Clown was my line, but I was rotten at it--simply rotten.I'm still in the show business--different line, though.

I've got a show of my own.If you're going to be in town perhaps you'll come to see us tonight.Our boat's anchored down next to the wharf.You can see it from the windows.Come, and bring your folks.""Thank you," said Susan--she had for gotten her role and its accent."But I'm afraid we'll not be here."There was an expression in the stranger's face--a puzzled, curious expression, not impertinent, rather covert--an expression that made her uneasy.It warned her that this man saw she was not what she seemed to be, that he was trying to peer into her secret.His brown eyes were kind enough, but alarmingly keen.With only half her pie eaten, she excused herself and hastened to her room.

At the threshold she remembered the pocketbook Spenser had given her.She had left it by the fishing bag on the table.There was the bag but not the pocketbook."I must have put it in the bag,"she said aloud, and the sound and the tone of her voice frightened her.She searched the bag, then the room which had not yet been straightened up.She shook out the bed covers, looked in all the drawers, under the bed, went over the contents of the bag again.The pocketbook was gone--stolen.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, and stared at the place where she had last seen the pocketbook--_his_pocketbook, which he had asked her to take care of.How could she face him! What would he think of her, so untrustworthy! What a return for his kindness! She felt weak--so weak that she lay down.The food she had taken turned to poison and her head ached fiercely.What could she do? To speak to the proprietor would be to cause a great commotion, to attract attention to herself--and how would that help to bring back the stolen pocketbook, taken perhaps by the proprietor himself? She recalled that as she hurried through the office from the dining-room he had a queer shifting expression, gave her a wheedling, cringing good morning not at all in keeping with the character he had shown the night before.The slovenly girl came to do the room; Susan sent her away, sat by the window gazing out over the river and downstream.He would soon be here; the thought made her long to fly and hide.He had been all generosity; and this was her way of appreciating it!

They sent for her to come down to supper.She refused, saying she was not feeling well.She searched the room, the bag, again and again.She would rest a few minutes, then up she would spring and tear everything out.Then back to the window to sit and stare at the river over which the evening shadows were beginning to gather.Once, as she was sitting there, she happened to see the gaudily painted and decorated show boat.Aman--the stranger of the dinner table--was standing on the forward end, smoking a cigar.She saw that he was observing her, realized he could have seen her stirring feverishly about her room.A woman came out of the cabin and joined him.As soon as his attention was distracted she closed her shutters.And there she sat alone, with the hours dragging their wretched minutes slowly away.