"Yes, I'm Tom Merguelis, Miss. Jump in--everything is ready."
She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall, very thin young man, who smiled down at her in a quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive of the Cheshire Cat. That vague, deprecatory grin was as much a part of Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair, his retreating chin, and the whole amiable vacancy of his expression. His youth had been passed before the public as "assistant" to Professor Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting hypnotist, who was accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him drink kerosene under the impression it was beer; smack his lips over furniture-polish; eat potato peelings for sausages; bark like a dog, meow like a cat, make love to a bolster, and generally disport himself to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper audiences. Six years of this had left Tommy without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered grin, which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances of their meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric quality.
But as they drove through the deserted streets she realized her mistake, and corrected so unjust a first impression. The artless, gawky creature idolized Adair, and was proud beyond measure to be serving him so romantically. It gave him an extraordinary fellow-feeling for Phyllis to have her also on her knees at the shrine of the demigod; and he overflowed with a hero-worship so naïve and sincere that she could not help liking him--grin and all. Indeed, it seemed a happy augury for her own future that Adair could excite so profound an admiration in those about him. Mr. Merguelis seemed as infatuated as she, and saw nothing strange in these midnight proceedings. There was approval in that everlasting grin. Would she please call him Tommy? Mr. Adair called him Tommy. They shook hands on it in the semi-darkness, and she knew she had found a friend.
Phyllis expected that Cyril would be waiting for her at the station, and was much cast down to learn that she was to remain alone with Tommy until the train arrived. "Then we'll all bustle on board together, and nobody will notice you," explained Tommy. The good sense of this was apparent, yet at the same time she could not help feeling a little forlorn and slighted. "Nobody will notice you," said Young Lochinvar's Tommy.--Now that the die was cast, why should she not be noticed? She was ready to avow herself Adair's before all the world, and why not on that dark, ill-lighted platform, when her courage was nearly spent and her slim young body drooping?
They sat on a bench, and waited in a corner of the vast cavern, she with her bag in her lap, Tommy with his unrelaxing grin fixed on space. Waited and waited, while stragglers passed, immigrants with babies and bundles, hurrying couples returning to the suburbs from a night in town. Above the noise there suddenly rose a louder thunder. It was the train bursting in with a roar, hissing steam and grinding its brakes as it slowed down, throbbing majestically. Tommy seized her by the arm and ran along the platform.
"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"
"Third car back."
"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"
"Jump in!"
Others were scrambling in, too. Phyllis had a fleeting glimpse of Miss de Vere, still with dabs of make-up on her sulky, handsome face; of the wicked Prince, loaded down with baggage, and excitedly taking the direction of everything on his shoulders; of a stout, authoritative Jew with a diamond pin, who was staring at her with a greedy curiosity, and that cattleman's look, as of one who could tell the shape, age, attractiveness, and market value of a human heifer at a single glance. They jostled into the empty car, a dozen or more, settling themselves anywhere, anyhow, like a big boisterous family. Tommy and Phyllis slipped into a seat at the farther end, and they had hardly done so before the latter felt a hand reach over and touch her cheek; and turning, saw Adair! Tommy sprang up, and made way for him, Adair taking the vacated place as though by right.