Some young men ... and four or five chorus girls.
Nothing, however, in their present make-up could have recalled them to Steve's memory. Molly Martin had exchanged her green silk tights and gauze wings for a red flannel shirt-waist, a black leather belt, blue skirt, and cat-skin jacket. And Jessie Hannibal had shed her frou-frou frills and was buttoned to her red ears in a long gray ulster that reached down to her active little feet, now muffled in a pair of galoshes.
The dispute over the bill at an end, the Business Agent fished up a roll from one pocket and a handful of silver and copper coins from the other, counted out the exact amount, waited until the clerk marked a cross against his room number, calling him at seven o'clock A.M., tucked the receipt in his inside pocket, and began the weary ascent.
Steve shook himself free from the chair. This was about his hour. Rising to his legs, he elongated one side of his round body with his pudgy arm, and then the other, yawned sleepily, tipped his hat farther over his eyebrows, called to Larry to be sure and put him down for the 5.40, and mounted the stairs to his room. If he had had any doubts as to the fraudulent character of the whole "shooting match," his chance inspection of the caste had removed them.
On entering his room Steve made several discoveries, no one of which relieved his gloom or sweetened the acidity of his mind.
First, that the temperature was so far below that of a Pullman that the water-pitcher was skimmed with ice and the towel frozen as stiff as a dried codfish. Second, that Jerry, the clown, occupied the room to the right, and the two coryphées the room to the left. Third, that the partitions were thin as paper, or, as Steve expressed it, "thin enough to hear a feller change his mind."
With the turning-off of the gas and the tucking of Steve's fat round face and head under the single blanket and quilt, the sheet gripped about his chin, there came a harsh, rasping cough from the room on his right. Jerry had opened. Steve ducked his head and covered his ears. The clown would stop in a minute, and then Mr. Dodd would drop off to sleep.
Another sound now struck his ear—a woman's voice this time, with a note of sympathy in it. Steve raised his head and listened.