I did not have any special conversation with him, anyway. I was still ugly when I thought upon his warning about that painted girl—as if I wanted her! And I was careful that she should have no word to carry to him about me; I never looked in her direction.
Furthermore, I did not want to know very much about what they were up to inside. I was ashamed of my job. It struck me that if I came to know all the fraud of the thing I’d jack the proposition. An ostrich sort of attitude, to be sure, a foolish evasion, but that’s just how it was, like other things which came up in my life, things not lending themselves readily to explanation as I look back on them now.
I saw patrons come out, some angry and with red faces, some ashamed, some laughing—but only a few of the last, and they were plainly chaps who took it as a joke when anybody could put something across in their case.
Man after man came out with a broad piece of paper in his hand, crumpled it up, swore, and dashed it down on the sidewalk.
It was a chart purporting to be a reading of bumps, as Professor Jewelle sized up the patron’s cranium. Nobody seemed to be very well pleased. A lot of them pitched into me and said that I had promised that the reading was free.
Well, the reading was free.
But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars for it.
Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances—“Three dollars!”
Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these records as liar and half-wit combined.
I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project.