“Do you suppose it is alright for him to go?” he asked.
“I guess so,” nodded Don. “He is pretty well able to take care of himself.”
The city was wrapped in darkness when the professor began his wandering, a darkness which was broken by the bright lights on the business streets and the more feeble ones on the side streets. The professor headed for the wharves, where the masts of the medley of crafts could be seen rising above the low houses which fronted the bay. Down in this section the savant found some queer crooked streets, lined with rows of box-like houses and cheap eating places. Groups of men and women sat on the doorsteps and fire escapes, children whooped and played in the streets, and scraps of music, jarring one on the other, came from phonographs and radios. Sailors and business men walked back and forth in the narrow streets, and the professor found much to study.
He strode along the docks, examining with interest the multitude of ships there, ranging from huge ocean steamers to small private boats. Liners, tramp ships, battered steam boats, sailing vessels, schooners, yachts, sloops, catboats, yawls and power cruisers lay side by side with tugs and ferries. An army of stevedores worked under blazing arc lights loading and unloading, and the air vibrated with the rattle of machinery, the hoarse cries of the men, and the thump of boxes and crates. So deeply engrossed was the professor in the scenes which he was witnessing that he forgot the passage of time.
He had wandered far down the shore line when he came at last to a street more narrow and crooked than the rest. It was in fact nothing more than an alley, flanked by tall seamen’s houses, with restaurants and pool parlors on the ground floors. The professor looked at a sign post and saw that it was named Mullys Slip.
“Mullys Slip, eh?” thought the teacher. “This is the quaintest of them all. I think I’ll stroll up it.”
Accordingly, he walked up the narrow sidewalk, looking with interest into the stores and eating houses as he passed by, listening to snatches of conversation as he passed groups who sat out taking advantage of the cool air. When he had walked to the end of the Slip he walked back, and seeing a well-lighted eating place near the dock, entered it and sat down at a round table. While he ordered a sandwich and coffee he looked around him.
It was a long, low room, the air of which was nearly obscured by tobacco smoke, half filled at the time with men who evidently came from the ships. Most of them were eating, the rest were smoking and talking, and a few slept, hanging over the tables. The professor ate his sandwich and sipped his coffee, content and easy in his mind, until, looking across from him into a narrow corner, he found the eyes of two men fixed upon him.
One of the men was a powerful individual with a heavy, unhealthy looking face, whose eyes, set close together, looked slightly crossed. The other was tall and thin, with long and dangling arms. Both of them were dressed in rough black clothing, which gave no real hint as to what business they were engaged in. They might have been sailors or stevedores, and both showed unmistakable signs of hardy, adventurous lives. They had evidently been talking about the professor, for their eyes were bent on him with earnest scrutiny, and when they observed that he had seen them they hastily resumed their conversation.
The professor paid no attention to them at first, but went on eating, looking around with keen eyes and mentally cataloguing the men in the place. But when he once more looked across at his neighbors they were bending the same intent look upon him. Vague doubt began to stir the mind of professor Scott.