“Not now.”
I had sat through just such all-night sessions in the days when such feats were regarded as title to man’s estate, but to-night the mood was foreign to my own.
“Shake hands with my old friend, ‘Gyp, the Blood,’ alias Frangipani,” said Hungerford, whose good humor was proof against hunger, drowsiness, the cold gray dawn and stale tobacco. “Mr. Frangipani was not a professor of English at Columbia.”
“How be you, friend? Seen you on the deck,” said a stocky, square fellow in ambulance uniform, who gave me a drowsy squint from around a knobby nose and put out a squatty hand which was minus a finger. “Not drinkin’?”
“Thanks, no. The atmosphere is strong enough,” I answered, wondering in what strange by-ways of civilization—tramp steamer, traveler of the underworld, or ranger of the Western prairies—the man had gone his careless journey.
“Mr. Tooker, of Tookerville, Mississippi, sah. Mr. Tooker is a close student of our great national game.”
“Very glad to know you, Mr. Littledale,” said a brisk little fellow, sober, well-groomed, soft-voiced, alert and smiling. “Heard a good deal about you.”
“Mr. Galligan, of Walla Walla. Mr. Galligan is returning from his period of rest at the front to get a little excitement in the Coeur d’Alene district,” said Hungerford, who was in good spirits.
A powerful, big-framed youth, with bullet head, blue eyes and thin lips, who had been making desperate attempts at keeping his eyes open, yawned, and said thickly:
“’Scuse me. Had a —— of a night in Bordeaux. Glad to know you.”