They had quit the dining room and sought out the location of their deck chairs when, for the first time, the detective seemed to become aware that Bronston’s cheeks were rosy and smooth, whereas a roughened stubble covered his own jowls. “I think I’ll go below and take a shave,” he said, running the palm of his hand over his chops.
“Use my safety, if you feel like it,” suggested Bronston casually. “There’s a new blade in it.”
Half an hour later, when Bronston invaded the stateroom to get a pocketful of cigars, Keller stood facing the mirror, putting on his collar and tie.
“I couldn’t find my razor,” he said, with his head turned away from Bronston; “I must’ve [427] left it on that Chicago train. And yet I’d have sworn I put it into my valise. So I had to use yours. But you were wrong when you said it had a new blade in it. If that’s a new blade I’ll eat it. It mighty near pulled my upper lip off.”
“Your upper lip?” echoed Bronston instantly.
“Sure,” said Keller. There was a touch of embarrassment in his tone as he faced Bronston. “I took your advice about this moustache of mine—clipped it close with the scissors and then gave myself the twice-over with your safety.” His upper lip showed bare; the skin had a bleached look and was raw from the scraping it had just undergone.
As Keller passed out of the room, caressing the place where his moustache had been, Bronston noted that Keller had made other changes in his person. Keller had exchanged the bright green tie which he wore at breakfast for a dull brown bow; and he had put on a lighter pair of shoes—patent-leather shoes, with thin soles and buttoned uppers. His broad-toed, heavy-soled pair showed under his bed where he had shoved them.
Conceding the weather to be fair, as in this instance it assuredly was, the majority of the passengers upon a big liner eastward bound give over their first day at sea to getting used to their new and strange surroundings, to [428] getting lost in various odd corners of the ship and finding themselves again, to asking questions about baggage gone astray, to wondering why they are not seasick. As regards the two principal characters of this narrative, nothing of interest occurred during the first day except that Keller went below late in the afternoon to take a nap, and that shortly before dark, when he had waked, Bronston limped in with a look of pain upon his face, to report that while watching a lifeboat drill he had got a foot hurt.
“A clumsy ass of a coal passer dropped his oar and hit me right on the big toe with the butt of it,” he explained. “I didn’t give him away, because the second officer was right there and I judged he would have given the poor devil fits for being so careless. But it hurts like the very mischief.”
He got his left shoe off and sat for a bit caressing the bruised member.