But after he had selected the spot he couldn’t do it. In fact, there was nothing further to do or say.
He looked into the crimson, disfigured visage, at the two red and swollen fists awaiting attack.
Then, dropping his hands into his pockets, he turned on his heel, walked slowly to the door, let himself out, closed the door quietly behind him.
Smull emerged a little later, stepped into the elevator, and went up to the club barber.
“Charlie,” he said, “I got bunged playing squash. Kindly apply the sinking fund process to my left eye.”
After an hour’s treatment: “I guess that’s the best I can do, Mr. Smull,” concluded the barber.
Smull inspected himself in the glass: “Hell,” he said, “—and I’ve got a date.”
However, he dined early at the club. He maintained sleeping quarters there. Dinner was served in his room. He had a quart of Burgundy to wash down the entrée, and one or two more serious highballs for the remainder of the repast. He was a fastidious feeder, but always a large one. It was that, principally, which played the devil with him. A skin saturated with alcohol completed the muscular atrophy of what had been a magnificent, natural strength in college.
But that was long ago: his sensations had been his gods too long. They had done for him—worse still, they had nearly done with him. What remained, principally, was a shameless persistence. Only the man himself knew the tragedy of it. But such men are doomed to go on.