CHAPTER XVI THE AWAKENING
The man whose part the lawyer had taken had yielded to his touch almost dazedly as the girl disappeared. The keen, pleasurable tang of danger which had leaped in his blood when he faced the enmity of the crowded street—the reckless zest with which he would have met any odds and any outcome with the same smile, and gone down if need be fighting like the tiger in the jungle—had been pierced through by that look from the balcony. His poise for a puzzling moment had been shaken, his self-command overthrown. Feeling a dull sense of anger at the curious embarrassment upon him, he went slowly through the office to the desk, and with his back to the room, lit a cigar.
The action was half mechanical, but to the men gathered at the windows, as they got down from the chairs on which they had been standing, interested spectators of the proceedings outside, it seemed a pose of gratuitous insolence. Tom Felder, entering, saw it with something of resentment.
"That was a close squeak," he said. "Do you realize that? In five minutes more you'd have been handled a sight worse than you handled your man, let me tell you!"
The man of no memories smiled, the same smile that had infuriated the bar-room—and yet somehow it was more difficult to smile now.
"Is it possible," he asked, "that through an unlucky error I have trounced the local archbishop?"
Felder looked at him narrowly. Beneath the sarcasm he distinguished unfamiliarity, aloofness, a genuine astonishment. The appearance in the person of Hugh Stires of the qualities of nerve and courage had surprised him out of his usual indifference. The "tinhorn gambler" had fought like a man. His present sang-froid was as singular. Had he been an absolute stranger in the town he might have acted and spoken no differently. Felder's smooth-shaven, earnest face was puzzled as he answered curtly:
"You've trounced a man who will remember it a long time."
"Ah?" said the man addressed easily. "He has a better memory than I, then!"