Schultzy made a little deprecating gesture with his hands, his shoulders. “I guess I don’t look like no juvenile lead, and that’s a fact. But I’m all shot to pieces. Took a drink the size of this”—indicating perhaps five fingers—“up yonder on Canal Street; straight whisky. No drinking allowed on the show boat. Well, sir, never felt it no more’n it had been water. I just got news my wife’s sick in the hospital.”
Ravenal made a little perfunctory sound of sympathy. “In New Orleans?”
“Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m going. It’s a dirty trick, but I’m going.”
“How do you mean, dirty trick?” Ravenal was mildly interested in this confiding stranger.
“Leave the show flat like that. I don’t know what they’ll do. I——” He saw that the Cotton Blossom was now snugly at ease in her new position, and that her gangplank had again been lowered. He turned away abruptly, without a good-bye, went perhaps ten paces, came back five and called to Ravenal. “You ever acted?”
“Acted!”
“On the stage. Acted. Been an actor.”
Ravenal threw back his handsome head and laughed as he would have thought, ten minutes ago, he never could laugh again. “Me! An actor! N—” then, suddenly sober, thoughtful even—“Why, yes. Yes.” And eyeing Schultzy through half-shut lids he tapped the tip of his shiny shabby boot with the smart little malacca cane. Schultzy was off again toward the Cotton Blossom.
If Ravenal was aware of the scrutiny to which he was subjected through the binoculars, he gave no sign as he lounged elegantly on the wharf watching the busy waterside scene with an air of indulgent amusement that would have made the onlooker receive with incredulity the information that the law was even then snapping at his heels.
Captain Andy Hawks scampered off the Cotton Blossom and approached this figure, employing none of the finesse that the situation called for.