“I’ll be back in an hour,” she called to Tubal, and stepped out upon the street.
Her heart beat a trifle more quickly as she climbed the stairs to Lancelot Bangs’ photographic parlors—and as she climbed, she remembered that other visit, that mysterious conversation in the back room, overheard by her but not comprehended.... She comprehended it now.
As she opened the door a bell rang somewhere in the mysterious depths of those rooms where Lancelot carried on the rites of photography, and the young man appeared, a wet print in his fingers.
“Ah, Miss Lee,” he said, and preened himself. It is difficult to preen oneself with a black alpaca apron on which reaches from chest to knees, but Lancelot was conscious his shoes and necktie were visible. It gave him assurance.
“I want to talk to you, Mr. Bangs,” she said.
“Certainly! Certainly! Time’s your’n. Hain’t many visitors like you comes here.... Hain’t never had the pleasure of makin’ your portrait.”
“I didn’t come,” said Carmel, with that disconcerting directness of which she was mistress, “to talk about photographs. I came to talk about whisky.”
Lancelot reared back upon his heels and his Adam’s apple took a mighty heave upward.
“Whisky?”
“Exactly. I am going to print in the Free Press the story of how you sell whisky in your back room. I shall tell whom you have sold whisky to, how much you have sold, give the dates.” Carmel was pretending to more knowledge than she possessed, which, of course, is the first rule in the game.