He lighted a cigar.
“Where you stopping?” he asked. “Have n't seen you around here, have I?”
I shook my head.
“There's another hotel here, then?” said he. And his eyes narrowed craftily.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “two or three.”
Then I hesitated. But after all, why evade the man? I had come to his room with precisely the opposite intent. So, with a nervous abruptness not unlike his own, I gave him the name of my hotel—and Heloise's. And at the same time I watched him closely to see if it conveyed anything to him.
Plainly it didn't. He merely blew out a long spear of smoke, followed it for a moment with his eyes, and then glanced down at the cigar that he was turning slowly round and round between his fingers.
But he could not sit quietly for any length of time. He got up again, with that same jerky abruptness, and, muttering something about the room being close, strode to the window and threw it open.
He knew that he was acting rather uncivilly, for he turned to me then and said, with a fairly good imitation of a casual manner—“Mind a little air?”
“Not at all,” I replied. It was depressing to be talking thus about nothing, knowing so well what was in his heart and what was in mine. But I only mumbled the stereotyped phrase, “Not at all.”