“Does he like it here?”
The bantering look left her eyes. She jabbed her fork into her roast beef, and said, “Yes.”
I said, “That’s nice,” and she didn’t say anything for a minute or two.
The dining-room was fairly well filled. I didn’t figure the hotel rooms furnished the a good deal of it was steady trade. Several of the diners showed an interest in Marian Dunton and her escort. I figured the girl was pretty well known to the local trade. I asked her a few more questions about the town and got short, informative answers. She wasn’t trying to kid me any more. Something had put a damper on her spirits. I tried to figure whether it was someone who had come into the dining-room about the time the light went out of her eyes. If that was the case, I could divide responsibility between two middle-aged men who seemed utterly engrossed in the food and their own conversation, and the family party who looked like automobile tourists, a middle-aged man with a bald head and faded grey eyes, a chunky woman, a girl about nine, and a boy about seven.
After we’d had dessert, I offered her one of my cigarettes. She accepted. We lit up, and I took out the list of names I’d made and handed it to her. “How many of these people are still in town?” I asked.
She studied the list for a few minutes, and then said grudgingly, “You are smart. I mean you really are.”
I waited for her to answer my question. After a while she said, “You have fifteen names here. Not over four or five of them are still in town.”
“What happened to them?”
“Oh, they went the way of the railroad shops. Those people made up the younger set when Dr. Lintig lived here. I’ve known some of them. Quite a few left when business started to get bad. We had another setback in 1929. A canning factory that was here folder up.”
“How those who’re left? Do you f know them?”