“He must have made an impression.”
“Another move and I'd slapped him if I lost my job. They got to be some fresh when they disturb me, too.”
“Alone, then?”
“That's right. Wanted me to meet him, and showed me a roll of money. Me!” her contempt sharpened.
“He was young?”
“Young nothing, with gray in his shoebrush mustache.”
By such small things, Lemuel Doret reflected, the freshness that had fixed June Bowman in the girl's memory, men were marked and followed.
“I told him,” she volunteered further, “he didn't belong on the boardwalk but in the rough joints past the avenue.”
Paying for his drink Doret left the Torquay; and following the slight pressure of two suggestions and a faint possibility he found himself in a sodden dark district where a red-glass electric sign proclaimed the entrance to the World. An automobile stopped and a chattering group of young colored girls in sheer white with vivid ribbons, accompanied by sultry silent negroes, preceded him into the café. He was met by a brassy racket and a curiously musty heavy air.
The room was long and narrow, and on one wall a narrow long platform was built above the floor for the cabaret. There was a ledge about the other walls the width of one table, and below that the space was crowded by a singular assembly. There were women faintly bisque in shade, with beautiful regular features, and absolute blacks with flattened noses and glistening eyes in burning red and green muslins. Among them were white girls with untidy bright-gold hair, veiled gaze and sullen painted lips; white men sat scattered through the darker throng, men like Lemuel Doret, quiet and watchful, others laughing carelessly, belligerent, and still more sunk in a stupor of drink.