Ned Beaumont went straight up to the door and knocked.
The door was opened by a grey-haired bespectacled man. His face was mild and greyish and the eyes that peered anxiously through the pale-tortoise-shell-encircled lenses of his spectacles were grey. His brown suit was neat and of good quality, but not fashionably cut. One side of his rather high stiff white collar had been blistered in four places by drops of water. He stood aside holding the door open and said, “Come in, sir, come in out of the rain,” in a friendly if not hearty voice. “A wretched night to be out in.”
Ned Beaumont lowered his head no more than two inches in the beginning of a bow and stepped indoors. He was in a large room that occupied all the building’s ground-floor. The sparseness and simplicity of the room’s furnishings gave it a primitive air that was pleasantly devoid of ostentation. It was a kitchen, a dining-room, and a living-room.
Opal Madvig rose from the footstool on which she had been sitting at one end of the fireplace and, holding herself tall and straight, stared with hostile bleak eyes at Ned Beaumont.
He took off his hat and began to unbutton his rain-coat. The others recognized him then.
The man who had opened the door said, “Why, it’s Beaumont!” in an incredulous voice and looked wide-eyed at Shad O’Rory.
Shad O’Rory was sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the room facing the fireplace. He smiled dreamily at Ned Beaumont, saying, in his musical faintly Irish barytone, “And so it is,” and, “How are you, Ned?”
Jeff Gardner’s apish face broadened in a grin that showed his beautiful false teeth and almost completely hid his little red eyes. “By Jesus, Rusty!” he said to the sullen rosy-cheeked boy who lounged on the bench beside him, “little Rubber Ball has come back to us. I told you he liked the way we bounced him around.”
Rusty lowered at Ned Beaumont and growled something that did not carry across the room.
The thin girl in red sitting not far from Opal Madvig looked at Ned Beaumont with bright interested dark eyes.
Ned Beaumont took off his coat. His lean face, still bearing the marks of Jeff’s and Rusty’s fists, was tranquil except for the recklessness aglitter in his eyes. He put his coat and hat on a long unpainted chest that was against one wall near the door. He smiled politely at the man who had admitted him and said: “My car broke down as I was passing. It’s very kind of you to give me shelter, Mr. Mathews.”
Mathews said, “Not at all–glad to,” somewhat vaguely. Then his frightened eyes looked pleadingly at O’Rory again.
O’Rory stroked his smooth white hair with a slender pale hand and smiled pleasantly at Ned Beaumont, but did not say anything.
Ned Beaumont advanced to the fireplace. “‘Lo, snip,” he said to Opal Madvig.
She did not respond to his greeting. She stood there and looked at him with hostile bleak eyes.
He directed his smile at the thin girl in red. “This is Mrs. Mathews, isn’t it?”
She said, “It is,” in a soft, almost cooing, voice and held out her hand.
“Opal told me you were a schoolmate of hers,” he said as he took her hand. He turned from her to face Rusty and Jeff. “‘Lo, boys,” he said carelessly. “I was hoping I’d see you some time soon.”
Rusty said nothing.
Jeff’s face became an ugly mask of grinning delight. “Me and you both,” he said heartily, “now that my knuckles are all healed up again. What do you guess it is that makes me get such a hell of a big kick out of slugging you?”
Shad O’Rory gently addressed the apish man without turning to look at him: “You talk too much with your mouth, Jeff. Maybe if you didn’t you’d still have your own teeth.”
Mrs. Mathews spoke to Opal in an undertone. Opal shook her head and sat down on the stool by the fire again.
Mathews, indicating a wooden chair at the other end of the fireplace, said nervously: “Sit down, Mr. Beaumont, and dry your feet and–and get warm.”