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Updated: June 8, 2025
As I was thinking what to say, he moved away, but suddenly returned again. "What made you think Tournelli had been up to anything?" he asked sharply. "Nothing," I answered; "I only thought you and he, being friends" "You mean we're both waiters in the same restaurant. Well, I don't know him any better than I know that chap over there," pointing to the other waiter.
The Italian, with a face now distinctly white, leaned over the table, adjusting the glasses, but did not reply. "Waiter!" repeated the stranger, sharply. Tournelli's face twitched, then became set as a mask; but he did not move. The stranger leaned forward and pulled his apron from behind. Tournelli started with flashing eyes, and turned swiftly round.
She had not spoken yet, nor even lifted her eyes. When she did so, however, she raised them level with his, showed all her white teeth they were small and cruel-looking and said smilingly in his own dialect: "Thief!" Tournelli halted, rigid. "You're talking his lingo, eh?" said her escort good-humoredly. "Yes." "Well tell him to bustle around and be a little livelier with the dinner, won't you?
Tom had taken my order; the other waiters, including Tournelli, were absent, with the exception of a solitary German, who, in the interlude of perfunctory trifling with the casters, gazed at me with that abstracted irresponsibility which one waiter assumes towards another's customer. Even the proprietor had deserted his desk at the counter.
There was nothing in his ordinary, good-humored, but not very strong face to suggest that he himself was the subject of this hypothetical case. If he were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian certainly was not to be congratulated on his ambassador's prudence; and, above all, Manners was to be warned of the interpretation which might be put upon his counsels, and disseminated thus publicly.
For an instant her face, white as a phantom's, appeared pressed rigidly against the heavy plate-glass, her eyes staring with a horrible fascination back into the room I even imagined at us. Perhaps, as it was evident that Tournelli was not with her, she fancied he was still here; perhaps she had mistaken Tom for him!
"He's a Greaser or an Italian, and, I reckon, goes with his kind." Why had we not thought of this before? Nothing would be more natural than that the rich and imperious Tournelli should be exclusive, and have no confidences with his enforced associates. And it was evident that Tom had noticed it and was jealous. "I suppose he's rather a swell, isn't he?" I suggested tentatively.
"Then I may have something to tell YOU." Tom nodded, and turned away to his duties. The Mining Secretary and myself could scarcely wait to reach the street before we turned eagerly on Manners. "Well?" "Well; the woman you saw was Tom's runaway wife, and Tournelli the man she ran away with." "And Tom knew it?" "Can't say."
Yet what bade fair a moment ago to be a tragedy, seemed now to halt grotesquely. For Tournelli, throwing open his linen jacket with a melodramatic gesture, tapped his breast, and with flashing eyes and suppressed accents said, "Sare; you wantah me? Look I am herre!" The speculator leaned back in his chair in good-humored astonishment.
A momentary thrill of excitement passed over us at the possibility that Tournelli had poisoned their soup; but it presently lapsed, as we saw the couple partaking of it comfortably, and chatting with apparent unconcern. Was the scene we had just witnessed only a piece of Southern exaggeration? Was the woman a creature devoid of nerves or feeling of any kind; or was she simply a consummate actress?
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