“Cross the big dining-room and go into the alcove,” directed the clerk, after a glance at my hat. “The alcove is for gents. We herd the others in the big room.”
I crossed this main hall a few steps in advance of Judge Kingsley. Men were crowded at the tables gobbling food. No fancy feeding! Men jabbed knives into their mouths and grabbed stuff off plates and smacked their lips and snuffled and grunted. I stopped in the alleyway between these tables to look about. I heard a yell of warning and dodged just in time to escape.
Double swinging doors with spring hinges were burst open by the impact of a foot that must have been swung waist high for the kick. Out into the dining-room shot the individual who had kicked.
It was an apparition!
He was more than six feet tall and as slim as a beanpole. He wore a white cap, a white jacket, a white apron shrouded him to his heels, and he wore white shoes. He had a white, peaked face and his hair was tow-colored. On a huge tray that he held well above his head dishes were heaped high. He went past me and down the alleyway on the dead run, and wisps of steam from his load followed after, trailing on the air.
“You want to keep out of the road in this dining-room when the White Ghost is on the rampage,” advised a guest at the table in the alcove where we took seats. “He’s going to get somebody some day fine and plenty. A few months ago he got old Babb Coan, who was down here on crutches, nursing a broken leg, and couldn’t get out of the way in season. But the White Ghost was loaded with empty dishes—just empties. Some day he’s going to connect when he’s loaded with about seventeen hot dinners.”
The next moment a white streak came into the alcove, took half a dozen orders and darted back into the kitchen with a tray-load of empty dishes.
“It advertises the hotel,” explained the talkative guest. “Men come here from far and near to see the White Ghost razoo up and down the stretch, but for me I’d rather have more waiters and less slamming. It keeps me nervous, and when I’m nervous I can’t do justice to my vittles. I’m all the time expecting to see that man that’s doomed to get his get it. It’ll be a mighty mushy affair.”
By this time the White Ghost was back and was scaling loaded dishes about the table with a deftness that a quick dealer shows in a poker game.
And I, still blind to what Fate was preparing for my side of the case, was merely irritated by this tophet-te-larrup!