Archie became suddenly enraged
"Awful?" he said. "It's hell! This place ain't fit for a dog to stay in. Why, Gusta, it's alive--it's crawlin'! That's what it is! I didn't sleep a wink last night! Not a wink! Say, Gusta," he grasped the bars, pressed his face against them, "see Mr. Marriott and tell him to get me out of here. Will you? See him, will you?"
"I will, Archie," she said. "Ill go right away."
She was eager now to leave, for she had already turned sick with loathing.
"And say, Gusta," Archie said, "get me some cigarettes and send 'em down by Marriott."
"All right," she said. She was backing away.
"Good-by," he called. The turnkey was locking the door on him.
Outside, Gusta leaned a moment against the wall of the building, breathing in the outdoor air; presently she went on, but it was long before she could cleanse her mouth of the taste or her nostrils of the odor of the foul air of that prison in which her brother was locked.
XII
Gusta hurried out of the alley as fast as she could go; she wished to get away from the police station, and to forget the faces of those men in prison. It was now nine o'clock and the activity of the Market was waning; the few gardener's wagons that lingered with the remnants of their loads were but a suggestion of the hundreds of wagons that had packed the square before the dawn. Under the shed, a block long, a constable was offering at public vendue the household goods of some widow who had been evicted; the torn and rusty mattresses, broken chairs and an old bed were going for scarcely enough to pay the costs; a little, blue-bearded man, who had forced the sale, stood by sharply watching, ready to bid the things in himself if the dealers in second-hand furniture should not offer enough. Gusta hurried on, past butcher-shops, past small saloons, and she hurried faster because every one--the policemen, the second-hand dealers, the drivers of the market-wagons, the butchers in their blood-stained smock frocks--turned to look at her. It was three blocks to the Wayne Building, rearing its fifteen stories aloft from the roaring tide of business at its feet, and Gusta was glad to lose herself in the crowds that swarmed along the street.