Clifton was trying to compel Bonnie May to consent to board the raft. He had seized her arm roughly and was threatening her. She screamed her refusal. Then it came time for her to behold the murderous looks on the faces of the two men on the raft.
“Look at them!” she screamed. “Look! Look!” She pointed at the raft, her eyes wide with terror. The “audience” could not refrain from looking at the raft.
Jack and Thomason were wielding their paddles with great vigor. Jack had also begun to lurch from right to left, as a man might do in a storm-tossed raft. Thomason, catching the drift of things, was imitating him.
And then, unfortunately, Thomason’s bed gave way. With an ear-splitting crash it collapsed, just as Bonnie May screamed: “Look! Look!”
And of course it was at that precise instant that Mrs. Baron came rushing into the room.
CHAPTER XXVIII
AFTER THE CURTAIN WAS LOWERED
Mrs. Baron had returned from her calling expedition earlier than she had expected to. She had had a feeling that something might go wrong. Prescience is really a wonderful thing.
Now as the poor lady stood within Thomason’s room she was quite terrified. For the moment there had been a dreadful din. And now, looking at Thomason, she caught the rebellious expression in his round, innocent eyes. She saw that he had brass rings in his ears. Unfortunately she did not associate the brass rings with the window blinds. And his face was horribly streaked. His right leg was sticking up in air quite inelegantly, and he was clawing at some other unspeakable person in an effort to regain his equilibrium.
And then there was Bonnie May, with an insane light in her eyes. And behind Bonnie May was a smirking creature who grinned maliciously at Mrs. Baron, as if he and she shared some guilty secret in common. Certainly she did not know the man.
Moreover, there stood Flora, looking unspeakably demure, with the man Addis by her side. Addis was looking as if her arrival had provoked him. His look seemed to say: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you run along?”