“Say, Kid,” he said, “step inside here.”
He stepped inside and shook the man’s hand and thanked him.
“Aw, come off,” the man said, shutting the door. “Come in here.” He led the way by a dark passage past a flight of stairs. Sard heard the rustle of skirts and smelt scent; looking up suddenly, he saw the heads of two women looking over the stair-rail on the landing above. One of them coquettishly sucked her cigarette to a glow as he passed, so that he might see her face the better.
The man opened a door into a room which had a bar at one side of it, and a long table, with benches, at the other. The bar was closed by a grating. Two men were asleep on the benches with their heads drooped on their outstretched arms; they were breathing heavily from purple faces: “Feeling their siesta doing them good,” the train-hand called it. A third man, powerfully built, with a mottled olive face, brass earrings and a purple neckerchief, was sitting at the table eating with his knife. He had a small slab of something pale upon a dish in front of him. He shovelled flakes of this on to his knife-blade and then shovelled them into his mouth. He was a noisy as well as an untidy eater, being still a little in drink. He seemed displeased at the entrance of Sard: he dug his knife-point twice into the table, as though into someone’s body, and he said nothing, which was unusual in a land where all at least offer to share their food and drink with the newcomer.
The train-hand took Sard to the end of the table away from the other three and sat him down.
“Say, Kid,” he said, “you wanna beat it right out-a here.”
“How about you?” Sard asked.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You broke prison. You helped me to escape. You flung a tile at the officer, and some of those men must have recognised you, since they came in on the train with you.”
“I’m not lying awake any,” the man said. “I’m one of the boys. But you ain’t. What in hell you doing here? That’s what gets me.”