It was three in the afternoon before Oliver walked into the Hotel
Rosario again and when he did it was with the feeling that the house
detective might come up at any moment, touch him quietly on the shoulder
and remark that his bag _might_ be sent down to the station after him
if he paid his bill and left quietly and at once. An appearance before a
hoarse judge who fined him ten dollars in as many seconds had not helped
his self-confidence though he kept wondering if there was a sliding
scale of penalties for improper language applied to the police of St.
Louis and just what would have happened if he had called the large blue
policeman anything out of his A.E.F. vocabulary. Also the desk, when he
called there for his key, reminded him twingingly of the dock, and the
clerk behind it looked at him so knowingly as he made the request that
Oliver began to construct a hasty moral defence of his whole life from
the time he had stolen sugar at eight, when he was reassured by the
clerk's merely saying in a voice like a wink. “Telephone call for you
last night, Mr. Crowe.”
_Nancy!_
With a horrible effort to keep impassive, “Yes? Who was it?”
“Party didn't leave a name.”
“Oh. When?”
“'Bout 'leven o'clock.”
“And she didn't leave any message?” Then Oliver turned pink at having
betrayed himself so easily.
“No-o--_she_ didn't.” The clerk's eyelid drooped a trifle. Those collegy
looking boys were certainly hell with women.
“Oh, well--” with a vast attempt to seem careless. “Thanks. Where's the
'phone?”
“Over there” and Oliver followed the direction of the jerked thumb to
shut himself up in a booth with his heart, apparently, bent upon doing
queer interpretative dances and his mind full of all the most apologetic
words in or out of the dictionary. “Hello. Hello. _Is this Nancy_?”
“This is Mrs. S. R. Ellicott.” The voice seems extremely detached.
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Ellicott. This is Oliver--Oliver Crowe, you
know. Is Nancy there?”
Nor does it appear inclined toward lengthy conversation--the voice at
the other end. “No.”
“Well, when will she be in? I've got to take the five o'clock train Mrs.
Ellicott--I've simply got to--I may lose my job if I don't--but I've got
to talk to her first--I've got to explain--”
“There can be very little good, I think, in your talking to her Mr.
Crowe. She has told me that you both consider the engagement at an end.”
“But that's impossible, Mrs. Ellicott--that's too absurd” Oliver felt
too much as if he were fighting for life against something invisible to
be careful about his words. “I know we quarrelled last night--but it
was all my fault, I didn't mean anything--I was going to call her up the
first thing this morning but you see, they wouldn't let me out--”
Then he stopped with a grim realization of just what it was that he had
said. There was a long fateful pause from the other end of the wire.
“I'm afraid I don't quite understand, Mr. Crowe.”
“They wouldn't let me out. I was--er--detained--ah--kept in.”
“Detained?” The inflection is politely inquisitive.
“Yes, detained. You see--I--you--oh dammit, I was in jail.” This time
the pause that follows had to Oliver much of the quality of that little
deadly hush that will silence all earth and sky in the moment before
Last Judgment. Then--
“_In jail_,” said the voice with an accent of utter finality.
“Yes--yes--oh it wasn't anything--I could explain in five seconds if I
saw her--it was all a misunderstanding--I called the policeman a boob
but I didn't mean it--I don't see yet why he took offence--it was
just--”
He was stifling inside the airless booth--he trickled all over. This was
worse than being court-martialled. And still the voice did not speak.
“Can't you understand?” he yelled at last with more strength of lung
than politeness.
“I quite understand, Mr. Crowe. You were in jail. No doubt we shall read
all about it in tomorrow's papers.”
“No you won't--I gave somebody else's name.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Ellicott was ticking off the data gathered so far on
her fingers. The brutal quarrel with Nancy. The rush to the nearest
blind-tiger. The debauch. The insult to Law. The drunken struggle.
The prison. The alias. And now the attempt to pretend that nothing had
happened--when the criminal in question was doubtless swigging from a
pocket-flask at this very moment for the courage to support his flagrant
impudence in trying to see Nancy again. All this passed through Mrs.
Ellicott's mind like a series of colored pictures in a Prohibition
_brochure_.
“But I can explain that too. I can explain everything. Please, Mrs.
Ellicott--”
“Mr. Crowe, this conversation has become a very painful one. Would it
not be wiser to close it?”
Oliver felt as if Mrs. Ellicott had told him to open his bag and when he
did so had pointed sternly at a complete set of burglar's tools on top
of his dress-shirts.
“Can-I-see-Nancy?” he ended desperately, the words all run together:
But the voice that answered was very firm with rectitude.
“Nancy has not the slightest desire to see you, Mr. Crowe. Now or
ever.” Mrs. Ellicott asked pardon inwardly for the lie with a false
humility--if Nancy will not save herself from this young man whom she
has always disliked and who has just admitted to being a jailbird in
fact and a drunkard by implication, she will.
“I should think you would find it easier hearing this from me than you
would from her. She has found it easier to say.” “But, Mrs. Ellicott--”
“There are things that take a little too much explaining to explain, Mr.
Crowe.” The meaning seemed vague but the tone was doomlike enough. “And
in any case” the voice ended with a note of flat triumph, “Nancy will
not be home until dinnertime so you could not possibly telephone her
before the departure of your train.”
“Oh.”
“Good-by, Mr. Crowe,” and a click at the other end showed that Mrs.
Ellicott had hung up the receiver, leaving him to shriek “But listen--”
pitiably into the little black mouthpiece in front of him until Central
cut in on him angrily with “Say, whatcha tryin' to do, fella? Break my
ear?”