Perhaps ten performers occupied the stage, and at one end was the hysterical scraping on strings, the muffled hammered drums, that furnished the rhythm for a slow intense waltz.
Yet in no detail was the place so marked as by an indefinable oppressive atmosphere. The strong musk and edged perfumes, the races, distinct and subtly antagonistic or mingled and spoiled, the rasping instruments, combined in an unnatural irritating pressure; they produced an actual sensation of cold and staleness like that from the air of a vault.
Doret ordered beer in a bottle, and watched the negro waitress snap off the cap. He had never seen a café such as this before, and he was engaged, slightly; its character he expressed comprehensively in the word “bad.”
A wonderfully agile dancer caught the attention of the room. The musicians added their voices to the jangle, and the minor half-inarticulate wail, the dull regular thudding of the bass drum were savage. The song fluctuated and died; the dancer dropped exhausted into her chair.
Then Lemuel saw June Bowman. He was only a short distance away, and—without Bella—seated alone but talking to the occupants of the next table. Lemuel Doret was composed. In his pocket he removed the automatic pistol from its rubber case. Still there was no hurry—Bowman was half turned from him, absolutely at his command. The other twisted about, his glance swept the room, and he recognized Doret. He half rose from his chair, made a gesture of acknowledgment that died before Lemuel's stony face, and sank back into his place. Lemuel saw Bowman's hand slip under his coat, but it came out immediately; the fingers drummed on the table.
The careless fool—he was unarmed.
There was no hurry; he could make one, two steps at Bowman's slightest movement.... Lemuel thought of Flavilla deserted, dying alone with a parched mouth, of all that had gone to wreck in the evil that had overtaken him—the past that could not, it appeared, be killed. Yet where Bowman was the past, it was nearly over. He'd finish the beer before him, that would leave some in the bottle, and then end it. With the glass poised in his hand he heard an absurd unexpected sound. Looking up he saw that it came from the platform, from a black woman in pale-blue silk, a short ruffled skirt and silver-paper ornaments in her tightly crinkled hair. She was singing, barely audibly:
“Oh, children ... lost in Egypt
See that chariot....
... good tidings!”
Even from his table across the room he realized that she was sunk in an abstraction; her eyes were shut and her body rocking in beat to the line.
“Good tidings,” she sang.