“I haven’t seen them,” said Carmel, “but I’m certain you haven’t the least cause for worry.”
“Would you call this suit genteel?”
“That’s the word. It is exactly the word. It—it’s the most genteel suit I ever saw.”
She was about to leave when a rapping on the back door of the studio attracted Mr. Bangs’s attention, and attracted it so peculiarly that Carmel could not but remark it with something more than curiosity. If one can have suspicion of an individual one does not know, with whose life and its ramifications she is utterly unaware, Carmel was suspicious of Mr. Bangs. It was not an active suspicion—it was a vague suspicion. It resembled those vague odors which sometimes are abroad in the air, odors too faint to be identified, so adumbrant one cannot be sure there is an odor at all.... Mr. Bangs, who had been the picture of self-satisfaction, became furtive. For the first time one ceased to be aware of his clothes and focused upon his eyes....
“Er—pardon me a moment,” he said, in a changed voice, and made overrapid progress to answer the knock. It was inevitable that Carmel’s ears should become alert.
She heard a door opened and the entrance of a man who spoke in an attempted whisper, but not a successful whisper. It was as if a Holstein bull had essayed to whisper.
“Sh-sssh!” warned Mr. Bangs.
“It’s here,” said the whisper. “Back your jitney into the first tote road this side of the hotel, and then mosey off and take a nap. Everything’ll be fixed when you git back.”
“Sh-sssh!” Mr. Bangs warned a second time.
Carmel heard the door open and close again, and Mr. Bangs returned.