“But what the deuce takes him such a distance this time of year?”
“Oh, railroad stuff.”
“Bore—the tropics in midsummer!”
“Tropics?”
“Well,—that’s what I’d call the Hawaiian Islands. One of my men, McIntyre, met him on the way out. Wrote that if Cunningham didn’t kick at going, guessed he couldn’t. But why in hades—”
The woman beside him heard no more. Hawaii!! Like some giant machinery against her ears, his words became a whirr. She smiled mechanically, as so many women have done, while the world stood still.
Fate had lifted the prompter’s hand and slowly the curtain descended on Act II of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.
[330]
]CHAPTER III—ACT III
The hum of arrival in that great hive, the Grand Central, kept up an incessant drone. Scurrying figures swarmed like bees from the gates to disappear into the night. Red caps raced back and forth, elbowing one another in the rush for spoils. City husbands reached out eagerly from roped-off lines to country wives and sunburned youngsters. Embraces and laughter and inarticulate efforts to tell everything in one moment kept the air abuzz. Life, centralized in one small area of space, was at its busiest.
Into this hubbub from the Lake Shore Limited swung a man in tweed suit, the porter at his side laden with the trappings of a long trip. His big shoulders pushed through the throng into the lighted terminal and he looked around. Rapidly his glance traveled from face to face, then back along the congested line and once again its length. A look of annoyance that brought brows together followed the swift scrutiny and he made for the telephone booths. Impatiently he gave the operator a number, concentrating his gaze on her while she made the Long Island connection. When some three minutes later he emerged from the booth, the look of annoyance had changed to anger.