“I’ll be at the St. Andrew Hotel,” he added. “You’ll see me again. Take my tip or you’ll regret it all your life, Doctor Lang.”
He went down the street, leaving Lang really impressed by his tone of cold earnestness. He did not blame Carroll for being bitter and disappointed. He was bitterly disappointed himself, and of course it looked plain to Carroll that he was confiscating all the profits of their common gamble.
He felt tired and irritable, and knew that he must be famished, but when he went to a restaurant he could swallow nothing solid. He managed to take a glass of hot milk, and went wearily home to his hotel room, where he called up the Iberville, and asked for Miss Morrison. It seemed the only bright spot in a disappointing world.
She was out. She had left the hotel. The clerk did not know whether she would be back. She had left town, he thought. Her address? He could not say, but any letters would be forwarded.
He hung up the receiver, in a state of weary disgust that was like prostration. Eva’s relatives had called for her at last; they had taken her away. He would not see her again. He might write. But what was the use?
The whole thing was over, the farce—drama—tragedy. He had taken risks, nearly lost his life, skirted the edge of crime, all for less than nothing. He was back where he had started, minus several dollars, a suit of clothes, a gold watch and a medical case. Then he recollected his half of the odd five hundred and twenty-seven dollars—a gain, indeed, but it was not pleasant money. He felt disposed to give it away, to clear away the whole wretched business, which, according to Carroll, he had not yet fully plumbed.
He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. The chatter of the stock ticker echoed in his ears—forty—forty and an eighth—forty-one——
He awoke and found the room pitchy dark. It was hardly five o’clock when he had lain down. He must have fallen into a dead slumber. He got up drowsily, switched on the light, and found to his amazement that his watch said nine o’clock.
He was still stupid with sleep, and he decided to go definitely to bed, began to undress, and removed the small articles from his pockets, as he most methodically did every night. He wound up his dollar watch, laid it on the bureau, took out his money, felt for his bunch of keys.
They were not in his trousers pocket. He must have left them in the other trousers when he changed. The crumpled, sea-stained clothes from the Cavite’s disaster lay on a chair, but the bunch of keys was in none of the pockets. He had had them last in Rockett’s bungalow, while trying to unlock the box, and he realized with cold consternation that he must have left them there.