She was still asleep when the street door opened and four men came in.
The floor of the office was a foot below the level of the street. The first of the four men tripped and stumbled over this descent; and this slight sound woke the woman. She got to her feet with scrambling quickness, and from behind the breastwork of the dusty bar, surveyed her visitors. Her eyes were failing, and she thrust her head forward and twisted it on one side that she might see the better.
When she saw who the leader of the four men was, she straightened up with relief and said, her voice openly contemptuous:
“Oh, it’s you, Kite?”
It was. V. R. Kite, Jack Routt, and two of Kite’s satellites. Kite glanced at the men over the checkerboard, and at the boy. The old men, at their entrance, had looked up in fretful hostility, surrendered to the inevitable, and returned to their game. The boy continued to read.
“Hello, Mrs. Moody!” said Kite to the woman; and he stepped toward her and lowered his voice. “Is there a man—Wint Chase—staying here?”
Mrs. Moody grinned. The grin revealed a startlingly perfect set of false teeth, as beautiful as those of a girl of twenty. Their very beauty made them hideous in Mrs. Moody’s mouth. She nodded.
“I want to see him.”
“He’s upstairs. I’ll show you.”
She turned around and took a lamp from a shelf behind her and lighted it. Then, with this in her right hand, and her petticoats gathered up in her left, she emerged from behind the bar and led the way to the stairs.