“How about us!” demanded Parthy. “Leaving us in the lurch like that, first Elly and now you after all these years. A fine pair, the two of you.”
“Now, Parthy!”
“Oh, I’ve no patience with you, Hawks. Always letting people get the best of you.”
“But I told you,” Schultzy began again, almost tearfully, “it’s for her, not me. She’s sick. You can pick up somebody here in New Orleans. I bet there’s a dozen better actors than me laying around the docks this minute. I got to talking to a fellow while ago, down on the wharf. The place was all jammed up with freight, and I was waiting to get by so’s I could come aboard. I said I was an actor on the Cotton Blossom, and he said he’d acted and that was a life he’d like.”
“Yes,” snapped Parthy. “I suppose he would. What does he think this is! A bumboat! Plenty of wharf rats in New Orleans’d like nothing better——”
Schultzy pointed to where a slim figure leaned indolently against a huge packing case—one of hundreds of idlers dotting the great New Orleans plank landing.
Andy adjusted the pair of ancient binoculars through which he recently had been scanning the wharf and the city beyond the levee. He surveyed the graceful lounging figure.
“I’d go ashore and talk to him, I was you,” advised Schultzy.
Andy put down the glasses and stared at Schultzy in amazement. “Him! Why, I couldn’t go up and talk to him about acting on no show boat. He’s a gentleman.”
“Here,” said Parthy, abruptly, her curiosity piqued. She in turn trained the glasses on the object of the discussion. Her survey was brief but ample. “He may be a gentleman. But nobody feels a gentleman with a crack in his shoe, and he’s got one. I can’t say I like the looks of him, specially. But with Schultzy playing us this dirty trick—well, that’s what it amounts to, and there’s no sense trying to prettify it—we can’t be choosers. I’d just step down talk to him if I was you, Hawks.”