"If you ever come to Kewanee, young fellow," he snorted. "I'll be happy to show you our new jail."
"Close in! March!" commanded the sergeant. The guard surrounded the hapless barber and wheeled through the door, their guns hedging his white jacket about inexorably. Sherman's hands spread his coat tails wide apart, and he rocked back and forth on heels and toes, his eyes smoldering.
"Come on, father"—Kitty had slipped her hand through her dad's arm, and was imparting direct strategy in a low voice—"we'll take mother down the street to look at the shops and make her forget our troubles. They've got some wonderful Moroccan bazaars in town; Baedeker says so."
"Shops, did you say?" Mrs. Sherman perked up at once, forgetting her grief under the superior lure.
"Yes, mother. Come on, let's go down and look 'em over." Sherman's good humor was quite restored. He pinched Kitty's arm in compliment for her guile. "Maybe they'll let us look at their stuff without charging anything; but we couldn't buy a postage stamp, remember."
They sailed out into the crowded street and lost themselves amid the scourings of Africa and south Europe. Almer was alone in the office.
The proprietor fidgeted. He walked to the door and looked down the street in the direction of the quays. He pulled his watch from his pocket and compared it with the blue face of the Dutch clock on the wall. His pudgy hands clasped and unclasped themselves behind his back nervously. An Arab hotel porter and runner at the docks came swinging through the front door with a small steamer trunk on his shoulders, and Almer started forward expectantly. Behind the porter came a tall well-knit man, dressed in quiet traveling suit—the Captain Woodhouse who had sailed from Alexandria as a passenger aboard the Princess Mary.
He paused for an instant as his eyes met those of the proprietor. Almer bowed and hastened behind the desk. Woodhouse stepped up to the register and scanned it casually.
"A room, sir?" Almer held out a pen invitingly.
"For the night, yes," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he signed the register. Almer's eyes followed the strokes of the pen eagerly.