Purple shadows were creeping across the desert. The air was clear as gin, dry as a piece of new blotting paper. It was early spring, but none of the men wore coats, except an occasional tourist.
Las Vegas keeps to the traditions of western towns by having one main street which shoots the works. A few cash-and-carry grocers and businesses that people will search out hang on to the side streets. Two main districts branch out at each end of this main street: one of them a two-mile-long collection of tourist camps containing some of the best air-conditioned auto cabins in the country. At the other end, like the arm of a big Z, is the stretch of houses where women sit around — waiting.
The length of the main street is sprinkled with gambling-casinos, eating-places, hotels, drugstores, and saloons. Virtually every form of gambling runs wide open. The whir of roulette wheels and the peculiar rattling clatter of the wheels of fortune were distinctly audible on the side walk as I walked along, taking stock of the place.
After I’d soaked up a little atmosphere, I found a taxi cab, and gave the address which Whitewell had written out for me.
The house itself was rather small, but it was distinctive. Whoever had designed it had tried to break away from the conventional styling which characterized the other house on the street.
I paid off the cab, walked up three cement steps to porch, and rang the bell.
The young giant who came to the door had blond hair but his face was the color of saddle leather. He looked out at me from gray, sun-bleached eyes, said, “You’re Lam from Los Angeles,” and, at my nod, gripped my hand with lean, strong fingers.
“Come in. Arthur Whitewell telephoned about you.”
I followed him into the house. The smell of cooking came to my nostrils. “My day off,” he explained. “We’re having dinner at five. Come on in. Try that chair over by the window. It’s comfortable.”
It was comfortable. It was the only really comfortable chair in the room. The whole house was like that. Little economies paved the way for a splurge on one or two items that would count. The house didn’t hive the stamp of poverty, but it bore unmistakable evidences of persons who wanted better things, and would make every sacrifice to possess one or two objects that would be symbols of what they wanted.