“All right, Cummings. Where do you go?” he said.
“Down here. We could get it at a soda fountain in the drug store yonder; but it’s better in the native quarter right down this street.”
He motioned down the side street from which he had emerged when Jack encountered him.
“All right; but I can’t stay long. I’ve got a friend waiting for me.”
“That’s all right,” Cummings assured him. “It’s not more than a block and you can take a short cut back to the hotel to save time.”
They walked down a curious narrow street with high-walled gardens on either side. Over the tops of the walls, in some places, great creepers straggled, spangled with gorgeous red and purple flowers. In other spots, drooping above the walls could be seen the giant fronds of banana plants, or tenuous palm tree tops.
Cummings stopped in front of a plaster house, badly cracked by the earthquake.
“Right in here,” he said.
Jack followed him into the dark, cool interior. After the blinding glare of the sun outside, it was hard at first to make out the surroundings. But Jack’s eyes soon became accustomed to the gloom, and he saw that they were in a small room with a polished floor and that two or three chairs and tables were scattered about.
An old negro woman of hideous appearance, with one eye and two solitary teeth gleaming out of her sooty, black face, shuffled in. She wore a calico dress and a red bandana handkerchief and was smoking a home-made cigar.