“Maybe he’s got money,” suggested Lambert.
“Or maybe he’s a dead beat; he looks on the queer,” opined young Wickert.
“He has a very fine and sensitive face. I think he has been ill.” The opinion came from a thin, quietly dressed woman of the early worn-out period of life, who sat a little apart from the others. Young Wickert started a sniff, but suppressed it, for Miss Westlake was held locally in some degree of respect, as being “well-connected” and having relatives who called on her in their own limousines, though seldom.
“Anybody know his name?” asked Lambert.
“Barnacle,” said young Wickert wittily. “Something like that, anyway. Bannsocker, maybe. Guess he’s some sort of a Swede.”
“Well, I only hope he doesn’t clear out some night with his trunk on his back and leave poor Mrs. Brashear to whistle,” declared Mrs. Bolles piously.
The worn face of the landlady, with its air of dispirited motherliness, appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Banneker is a gentleman,” she said.
“Gentleman” from Mrs. Brashear, with that intonation, meant one who, out of or in a job, paid his room rent. The new lodger had earned the title by paying his month in advance. Having settled that point, she withdrew, followed by the two other women. Lambert, taking a floppy hat from the walnut rack in the hall, went his way, leaving young Wickert and Mr. Hainer to support the discussion, which they did in tones less discreet than the darkness warranted.
“Where would he hail from, would you think?” queried the elder. “Iowa, maybe? Or Arkansas?”
“Search me,” answered young Wickert. “But it was a small-town carpenter built those honest-to-Gawd clothes. I’d say the corn-belt.”