"You don't recognize him?"
"Never saw the man in my life," and again he asked, "What's the idea?"
"You'd recognize a picture of Clayte?" I countered with a question of my own.
"Yes—I think so," rather dubiously. "But Dykeman would. Show them to him."
Dykeman reached for the photographs, spread them out before him, then looked up from them peevishly to say,
"For the good Lord's sake! Don't look any more like Clayte than it does like a horned toad. Is that what you've been wasting your time over, Boyne? If you ask me—"
"I don't ask you anything," retrieving the pictures, planting them deep in an inner pocket. Then I got myself out of the room.
Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Fremont House, I felt sort of bewildered. This last crack had taken all the pep I had left. I suddenly realized it was long after dinner time, and I'd had no dinner, no lunch, nothing to eat since an early breakfast. Worth had sent me to the girl—and I hadn't gone. I dragged myself around to Capehart's cottage as nearly whipped as I ever was in my life.
I found Barbara with Laura Bowman, every one else off the place, out at the shows. Those girls sure were good to me; they fed me and didn't ask questions till I was ready to talk. Nothing to be said really, except that I'd failed. I told them of meeting the Vandemans, and gave them Ina Vandeman's opinion as to how Worth's friends should conduct themselves just now.
"So they'll all be out there," I concluded, "Vandeman and his wife leading the grand march, her sisters as maids of honor—except Skeet, staying at home with her mother. Cummings goes as a Roman soldier; Doctor Bowman as a Spanish cavalier. Edwards didn't see it as the Vandemans do, but after I'd talked to him awhile, he agreed to be there."