"I think not."
The girl smiled suddenly, all by herself. "It was my dog that--upset you on Main Street this afternoon. You may remember ...? I thought you seemed to--to limp a little when you came in just now. I"m awfully sorry for the--mishap--"
"It is of no consequence," he said, with some signs of unrest. "I walk seldom. Your--pleasure-dog was uninjured, I trust?"
"Thank you. He was never better."
That the appearance of the pleasure-dog"s owner as a familiar of his boarding-house piqued his curiosity not the slightest was only too evident. He bowed, his eyes returning from steak to book.
"I am obliged to you for getting my supper."
If he had said, "Will you kindly go?" his meaning could hardly have been more unmistakable. However, Mrs. Paynter"s resolute agent held her ground. Taking advantage of his gross absorption, she now looked the delinquent boarder over with some care. At first glance Mr. Queed looked as if he might have been born in a library, where he had unaspiringly settled down. To support this impression there were his pallid complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. One noted, too, the tousled ma.s.s of nondescript hair, which he wore about a month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back; the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was the undeniably trim cut of the face, which gave an unexpected and contradictory air of briskness. The nose was bold; the long straight mouth might have belonged to a man of action. Probably the great spectacles were the turning-point in the man"s whole effect. You felt that if you could get your hands on him long enough to pull those off, and cut his hair, you might have an individual who would not so surely have been christened the little Doctor.
These details the agent gathered at her leisure. Meantime here was the situation, stark and plain; and she, and she alone, must handle it. She must tell this young man, so frankly engrossed in his mental and material food, which he ate by his watch, that he must fork over four times seven-fifty or vacate the premises.... Yes, but how to do it? He could not be much older than she herself, but his manner was the most impervious, the most impossible that she had ever seen. "I"m grim and I"m resolute," she said over to herself; but the splendid defiance of the motto failed to quicken her blood. Not even the recollection of the month"s sponge for board and the house-rent due next week spurred her to action. Then she thought of Fifi, whom Mr. Queed had packed off sobbing for his good pleasure, and her resolution hardened.
"I"m afraid I must interrupt your reading for a moment," she said quietly. "There is something I want to say...."
He glanced up for the second time. There was surprise and some vexation in the eyes behind his circular gla.s.ses, but no sign of any interest.
"Well?"
"When my aunt introduced you to me just now she did not--did not identify me as she should--"
"Really, does it make any difference?"
"Yes, I think it does. You see, I am not only her niece, but her business woman, her agent, as well. She isn"t very good at business, but still she has a good deal of it to be done. She runs this boarding-place, and people of various kinds come to her and she takes them into her house. Many of these people are entirely unknown to her.
In this way trouble sometimes arises. For instance people come now and then who--how shall I put it?--are very reserved about making their board-payments. My aunt hardly knows how to deal with them--"
He interrupted her with a gesture and a glance at his watch. "It always seems to me an unnecessary waste of time not to be direct. You have called to collect my arrearage for board?"
"Well, yes. I have."
"Please tell your aunt that when I told her to give herself no concern about that matter, I exactly meant what I said. To-night I received funds through the mail; the sum, twenty dollars. Your aunt," said he, obviously ready to return to his reading matter, "shall have it all."
But Sharlee had heard delinquent young men talk like that before, and her business platform in these cases was to be introduced to their funds direct.
"That would cut down the account nicely," said she, looking at him pleasantly, but a shade too hard to imply a beautiful trust. She went on much like the firm young lady enumerators who take the census: "By the way--let me ask: Have you any regular business or occupation?"
"Not, I suppose, in the sense in which you mean the interrogation."
"Perhaps you have friends in the city, who--"
"Friends! Here! Good Lord--_no!_" said he, with exasperated vehemence.
"I gather," was surprised from her, "that you do not wish--"
"They are the last thing in the world that I desire. My experience in that direction in New York quite sufficed me, I a.s.sure you. I came here," said he, with rather too blunt an implication, "to be let alone."
"I was thinking of references, you know. You have friends in New York, then?"
"Yes, I have two. But I doubt if you would regard them as serviceable for references. The best of them is only a policeman; the other is a yeggman by trade--his brother, by the way."
She was silent a moment, wondering if he were telling the truth, and deciding what to say next. The young man used the silence to bolt his coffee at a gulp and go hurriedly but deeply into the preserves.
"My aunt will be glad that you can make a remittance to-night. I will take it to her for you with pleasure."
"Oh!-All right."
He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out an envelope, and absently pitched it across the table. She looked at it and saw that it was postmarked the city and bore a typewritten address.
"Am I to open this?"
"Oh, as you like," said he, and, removing the spoon, turned a page.
The agent picked up the envelope with antic.i.p.ations of helpful clues. It was her business to find out everything that she could about Mr. Queed.
A determinedly moneyless, friendless, and vocationless young man could not daily stretch his limbs under her aunt"s table and retain the Third Hall Back against more compensatory guests. But the letter proved a grievous disappointment to her. Inside was a folded sheet of cheap white paper, apparently torn from a pad. Inside the sheet was a new twenty-dollar bill. That was all. Apart from the address, there was no writing anywhere.
Yet the crisp greenback, incognito though it came, indubitably suggested that Mr. Queed was not an entire stranger to the science of money-making.
"Ah," said the agent, insinuatingly, "evidently you have _some_ occupation, after all-of--of a productive sort...."
He looked up again with that same air of vexed surprise, as much as to say: "What! You still hanging around!"
"I don"t follow you, I fear."
"I a.s.sume that this money comes to you in payment for some--work you have done--"
"It is an a.s.sumption, certainly."
"You can appreciate, perhaps, that I am not idly inquisitive. I shouldn"t--"
"What is it that you wish to know?"
"As to this money--"
"Really, you know as much about it as I do. It came exactly as I handed it to you: the envelope, the blank paper, and the bill."
"But you know, of course, where it comes from?"
"I can"t say I do. Evidently," said Mr. Queed, "it is intended as a gift."
"Then--perhaps you have a good friend here after all? Some one who has guessed--"
"I think I told you that I have but two friends, and I know for a certainty that they are both in New York. Besides, neither of them would give me twenty dollars."
"But--but--but," said the girl, laughing through her utter bewilderment--"aren"t you interested to know who _did_ give it to you?
Aren"t you _curious?_ I a.s.sure you that in this city it"s not a bit usual to get money through the mails from anonymous admirers--"