Chapter 19

Newton's eating places were not appetizing at best, but a meal could be endured with less discomfort by night than by day, for at such times most of the flies were on the ceilings. The restaurant Gray entered was about what he had expected; along one side ran a quick-order counter at which were seated several customers; across from it was an oilcloth-covered table, perfectly bare except for a revolving centerpiece--one of those silver-plated whirligigs fitted with a glass salt-and-pepper shaker, a toothpick holder, an unpleasant oil bottle, and a cruet intended for vinegar, but now filled with some mysterious embalming fluid acting as a preservative of numerous lifelike insect remains. Here, facing an elderly man in a wide gray-felt hat, Gray seated himself.

Gray's neighbor was in no pleasant mood, for he whacked impatiently at such buzzing pests as were still on the wing, and when a perspiring Greek set a plate of soup before him he took umbrage at the presence of the fellow's thumb in the liquid. The argument that followed angered the old man still further, for it arrived nowhere except to prove that the offending thumb was the property of the proprietor of the restaurant, and by inference, therefore, a privileged digit.

When a departing customer left the door open, the elderly diner grumbled bitterly at the draught and draped his overcoat over his bent shoulders.

"Dam' Eskimos!" he muttered. "----raised in a chicken coop--Windy as a derrick!"

Gray liked old people, and he was tolerant of their crotchets. Irascibility indicates force of character, at least so he believed, and old folks are apt to accept too meekly the approach of decay. Here was a spirit that time had not dulled--it was like wine soured in an old cask. At any rate, wine it had been, not water, and that was something.

Most of the counter customers had drifted out when, without warning, the screen door banged loudly open and Gray looked up from his plate to see his recent acquaintance of the gambling table approaching. This time purpose was stamped upon the man's face, but whether it was deliberate or merely the result of more drinking there was no telling. He lurched directly up to the table and stared across at Gray.

"Slapped my face, didn't you?" he cried, after a menacing moment.

"I did, indeed," the speaker nodded, pleasantly.

"You ain't going to slap it again. You ain't going to slap anybody's--"

"What makes you think I won't?" Gray became aware as he spoke that his elderly neighbor had raised to the intruder a countenance stamped with a peculiar expression of incredulity, almost of anger, at the interruption, and that the two remaining counter customers had turned startled faces over their shoulders, while the proprietor, his arms full of dishes, had paused beside the swinging door to the kitchen.

That