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It struck her as they rolled out on to the street that he had made no effort whatever to sell the car. "Cold-blooded crowd," broke out Claybrook at length as they hurried on. "I do hope he won't be sick," she replied. He grunted. "In the army, wasn't he? Guess he can stand a little water. Used to worse than that." And after apparently waiting for her to break the silence, he again ventured,
I'm not in a hurry. Are you really all filled up?" The clerk gravely smiled and shook his head. She stared at him in desolate appeal. Her thoughts went rocketing off. What was she going to do? "How's this?" she heard Claybrook say. "Full up?" He had turned from his idle inspection of the lobby. "Not in two weeks. You can rent a floor in this hotel." He looked at Mary Louise.
Finally, after two days of backing and filling, of bickering and contesting, she had named her price. "Fifteen hundred," she had said and there was nothing in the way she said it that gave the slightest hope that it would be any less. It was a hold-up. Mary Louise met Claybrook; she was passing through the lobby of the Patterson where she still had her expensive room.
She noted the contrast: Claybrook rather beefy and a bit too red of face; Joe, on the other hand, quite slim and taut. His new clothes fitted him better; he had lost that raw-boned look. Joe asked her if she would not like to go for a ride. She looked up into his eyes from the chair which he had got for her and felt a childish pleasure, just as though he had shown her a personal attention.
"You did with me. But then you're pretty dangerous on these roads and I'll have to turn you in so that they can be looking out for you." Claybrook sullenly complied. And then, throwing the car into gear, they slipped quickly out of sight. After they had rounded the curve, he turned suddenly to Mary Louise. "That's a new one on me.
She turned and Claybrook was standing by her elbow. "How's tricks?" he inquired. For a moment she could not answer, only look at him gratefully. "I've been out of town. Just got back. Was going to call you up this evening, but I didn't have the chance," he went on. She murmured something unintelligible. "Waiting here for something?"
They parted in the lobby; Mary Louise with a bright spot on either cheek and her lips set in their tightest line; Claybrook suave and genial; Uncle Buzz bewildered and in some way wistfully regretful. His watery blue eyes held in them an unanswered question that seemed too ponderous for utterance. Joe was silent. He took her home, along the deserted streets as quickly as possible.
Up to that instant no thought of his own peculiar plight had crossed his mind. Now the reality of his dilemma rushed upon him with pitiless force. "May I ask," repeated the principal in measured tone, "what were you doing on the Claybrook Road at this hour, Blake?"
The game languished. Mary Louise did not know much about it and the men would lapse into rather boisterous spells of conversation during which time the cards would lie on the table forgotten, and Mrs. Thompson would gaze at her husband with deep absorption and occasionally at Claybrook and sometimes at Mary Louise in a far-off, absent-minded way.
Her thought returned again to Joe, being reminded perhaps by the little incident at the counter. She recalled Claybrook. She remembered Claybrook's words that afternoon that afternoon she had gone to Bloomfield. It was just a few minutes after they had left Joe Hooper on the road; they were passing the old Mosby place.
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