Midway in a gesture as he raised his hand to seize her, his legs shook under him, his voice stopped in his throat, he heaved forward, backward, then down on his face, and lay still in a crumpled mass.
She bent down swiftly, examined him, perceived that he was completely drunk and rose to look for help. It was nearing six o’clock but the houses were still closed against the night. Near her at a corner saloon, a studded glass sign announced:
Bostweiler’s Private Hotel
She hesitated a moment before the squalor and sordidness of the hotel entrance, divining the hideousness into which she had chanced, shuddered and rang the night bell. A colored doorman, sleeping somewhere in the green-lit hallway, called sleepily:
“Come right in!”
She knocked again and again with insistent, angry knocks, until he came stumbling and rubbing his eyes to the door. He smelt horribly of cheap whisky. With his aid she got Dangerfield in and up-stairs. The watcher grinned knowingly and, rather than enter into explanations, she hastily thrust a bill into his hand and dismissed him. Dangerfield on the bed was still unconscious. The room was tawdry, the carpet in shreds, the gas-fixture bent, and the blistered furniture covered with cheap, soiled imitation lace. She locked the door and drew a sofa before it, opened the windows, and sat down in a rocking-chair, her head racked with weary pains, watching the drabs and grays as they scurried before the gorgeous cavalcade of the victorious sun.
All at once Inga awoke with a sense of danger. Dangerfield was standing at the foot of her chair, or rather the specter of Dangerfield looked down at her with drawn lips and pasty face, with twitching nerves. It was late afternoon.