Presently a nearby woman smiled at him. She looked to be about fifty years old. There was a mangy peacock feather in her straw hat, which was set a-slant of dank black hair touched with gray.
"Hello, sweetheart," she said. "Come over here a minute." Her smile was toothless.
"Shut up, Mame," somebody else commanded. "You're drunk."
Luke looked at the man that had spoken. He was sitting alone at a table the length of the room away. He had a puffed face, red from liquor and blue from an unshaven beard; his coat, once black, had turned green; he wore no collar, and a part of the rim of his greasy derby-hat was torn away.
"Shut up," he repeated. "You're drunk."
"Thank Gawd," the woman assented. Her acknowledgment of the accusation was fervent; she returned her attention to the glass of whisky that stood on the table before her.
"You can sit here, if you want to," said the man, addressing Luke, and nodding at a chair beside him.
Luke crossed the room and took the chair. The other people in the room were indifferent to his entrance with the same indifference that the guests of Mrs. Ruysdael had shown. The woman that had invited him did not look his way; even the man that had invited him remained for some time silent. Luke ordered a glass of beer from an aproned waiter, who came with a tray full of whisky glasses in one hand, and five foaming beer-mugs in the fingers and thumb of the other.
"Will you have a drink with me?" Luke inquired of the derelict beside him.
"Sure," said he, and Luke noticed that, though he did not cough, his voice was hoarse.