The bow-legged ruffian paused to spit–deliberately–on the rug in front of him and to stare with bold challenging eyes at Madvig and Ned Beaumont. Then he went out.
Ned Beaumont wiped the palms of his hands with a handkerchief. He said nothing to Madvig, who was looking at him with questioning eyes. Ned Beaumont’s eyes were gloomy.
After a moment Madvig asked: “Well?”
Ned Beaumont said: “Wrong, Paul.”
Madvig rose and went to the window. “Jesus Christ!” he complained over his shoulder, “don’t anything ever suit you?”
Ned Beaumont got up from his chair and walked towards the door.
Madvig, turning from the window, asked angrily: “Some more of your God-damned foolishness?”
Ned Beaumont said, “Yes,” and went out of the room. He went downstairs, got his hat, and left the Log Cabin Club. He walked seven blocks to the railroad station, bought a ticket for New York, and made reservations on a night train. Then he took a taxicab to his rooms.
7
A stout shapeless woman in grey clothes and a chubby half-grown boy were packing Ned Beaumont’s trunk and three leather bags under his supervision when the door-bell rang.
The woman rose grunting from her knees and went to the door. She opened it wide. “My goodness, Mr. Madvig,” she said. “Come right on in.”
Madvig came in saying: “How are you, Mrs. Duveen? You get younger-looking every day.” His gaze passed over the trunk and bags to the boy. “Hello, Charley. Ready for the job running the cement-mixer yet?”
The boy grinned bashfully and said: “How do you do, Mr. Madvig?”
Madvig’s smile came around to Ned Beaumont. “Going places?”
Ned Beaumont smiled politely. “Yes,” he said.
The blond man looked around the room, at the bags and trunk again, at the clothes piled on chairs and the drawers standing open. The woman and the boy went back to their work. Ned Beaumont found two somewhat faded shirts in a pile on a chair and put them aside.
Madvig asked: “Got half an hour to spare, Ned?”
“I’ve got plenty of time.”
Madvig said: “Get your hat.”
Ned Beaumont got his hat and overcoat. “Get as much of it in as you can,” he told the woman as he and Madvig moved towards the door, “and what’s left over can be sent on with the other stuff.”
He and Madvig went downstairs to the street. They walked south a block. Then Madvig asked: “Where’re you going, Ned?”
“New York.”
They turned into an alley.
Madvig asked: “For good?”
Ned Beaumont shrugged. “I’m leaving here for good.”
They opened a green wooden door set in the red brick rear wall of a building and went down a passageway and through another door into a bar-room where half a dozen men were drinking. They exchanged greetings with the bar-tender and three of the drinkers as they passed through to a small room where there were four tables. Nobody else was there. They sat at one of the tables.
The bar-tender put his head in and asked: “Beer as per usual, gents?”
Madvig said, “Yes,” and then, when the bar-tender had withdrawn: “Why?”
Ned Beaumont said: “I’m tired of hick-town stuff.”
“Meaning me?”
Ned Beaumont did not say anything.
Madvig did not say anything for a while. Then he sighed and said: “This is a hell of a time to be throwing me down.”
The bar-tender came in with two seidels of pale beer and a bowl of pretzels. When he had gone out again, shutting the door behind him, Madvig exclaimed: “Christ, you’re hard to get along with, Ned!”
Ned Beaumont moved his shoulders. “I never said I wasn’t.” He lifted his seidel and drank.
Madvig w-as breaking a pretzel into small bits. “Do you really want to go, Ned?” he asked.
“I’m going.”
Madvig dropped the fragments of pretzel on the table and took a check-book from his pocket. He tore out a check, took a fountain-pen from another pocket, and filled in the check. Then he fanned it dry and dropped it on the table in front of Ned Beaumont.
Ned Beaumont, looking down at the check, shook his head and said: “I don’t need money and you don’t owe me anything.”