Radabaugh spat. “We-ell,” he drawled, “it don’t take much booze to wet a bone. But we’ll see to it the stuff don’t go sloshing around the gutters, anyway.”
For his lunch, Wint went to fat Sam O’Brien’s restaurant. He liked the place. The long, high counter, scrubbed white as the deck of a ship; the revolving stools before the counter; the shelves on which bottles of mustards and catsups and spices were ranged; and big Sam O’Brien in his vast white apron presiding over it all. There was a mechanical piano which played a tune for a nickel in the back of the restaurant, and it was jangling and tinkling when Wint came in. Half a dozen men were there before him; and they grinned when they saw Wint, and spoke among themselves. Sam O’Brien welcomed him with a chuckle. O’Brien was a jocular man. He set plate and knife and fork and a thick glass of water before Wint, and spread his hands on the counter, and asked in a booming voice:
“Well, how’s your appetite, you bold crusader?”
Wint flushed, and said uncomfortably: “Cut it out, Sam!”
The restaurant proprietor had his own ideas of a joke; and he made the most of them. At Wint’s words, he threw back his head and laughter poured out of him. He rocked, he slapped his great fist on the counter.
“Cut it out?” he repeated. “Oh, Wint, you’re the funny man. Cut it out, he says! The whole blamed town. ‘The booze is getting you, Hardiston. Cut it out,’ he says!” He bellowed the words. “Cut it out! Cut it out! Oh, Wint, you’ll be the death o’ me.”
There was never any use resenting Sam O’Brien. Wint laughed and said: “I’ll be the death of you if you don’t get me something to eat, Sam. Get a move on your old carcass.”
After lunch, he had a word or two with men upon the street; but he did not want to talk to them. He wanted to get out of their way, out of sight. His nerves were beginning to jangle; he wanted something to happen. There was hanging over him a storm; he wanted the storm to break. He had a thought of going to V. R. Kite and flinging a defiance in that old buzzard’s gold-filled teeth. He liked to think of Kite as an old buzzard; the phrase pleased him. Men will always be pleased to find they have used words tellingly. The gift of speech is what distinguishes man from the animals; it is right that he should vaunt himself upon it.
But in the end, Wint did not go to Kite; he went to Hoover’s office and hid himself in a back room with a law book. Neither Dick nor his father was there when he arrived; he counted on not being disturbed. He did not want to be disturbed. He wanted to be let alone. He was mistrustful of himself, of his motives and of his powers.
In mid-afternoon, the telephone rang; and he answered, expecting a call for one or the other of the Hoovers. But when he spoke into the instrument, some one said: “Is this you, Wint?”