Mrs. Wellington was busily writing at the desk, but he did not know who she was, and he did not care whom she was writing to. He did not observe the baleful glare of Mrs. Whitcomb, who sat watching Mrs. Wellington, knowing all too well who she was, and suspecting the correspondent—Mrs. Whitcomb was tempted to spell the word with one "r."
Mallory stumbled into the men's portion of the composite car. Here he nodded with a sickly cheer to the sole occupant, Dr. Temple, who was looking less ministerial than ever in an embroidered skull cap. The old rascal was sitting far back on his lumbar vertebræ. One of his hands clasped a long glass filled with a liquid of a hue that resembled something stronger than what it was—mere ginger ale. The other hand toyed with a long black cigar. The smoke curled round the old man's head like the fumes of a sultan's narghilé, and through the wisps his face was one of Oriental luxury.
Mallory's eyes were caught from this picture of beatitude by the entrance, at the other door, of a man who had evidently swung aboard at the most recent stop—for Mallory had not seen him. His gray hair was crowned with a soft black hat, and his spare frame was swathed in a frock coat that had seen better days. His soft gray eyes seemed to search timidly the smoke-clouded atmosphere, and he had a bashful air which Mallory translated as one of diffidence in a place where liquors and cigars were dispensed.
With equal diffidence Mallory advanced, and in a low tone accosted the newcomer cautiously:
"Excuse me—you look like a clergyman."
"The hell you say!"
Mallory pursued the question no further.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE COMPOSITE CAR
It was the gentle stranger's turn to miss his guess. He bent over the chair into which Mallory had flopped, and said in a tense, low tone: "You look like a t'oroughbred sport. I'm trying to make up a game of stud poker. Will you join me?"
Mallory shook his heavy head in refusal, and with dull eyes watched the man, whose profession he no longer misunderstood, saunter up to the blissful Doctor from Ypsilanti, and murmur again: