CHAPTER XXIX—AT THE CORNER OF TENTH
PETER sat alone in the corner room downstairs. Mechanically he turned the pages of Le Sourire—turned them forward and back, tried to see what lay before his eyes, tried indeed, to appear as should appear that well-known playwright, “Eric” Mann. “I must think objectively,” he told himself. “That's the great thing—to think objectively.”
Time was passing—minutes, hours, years. He was trying to think out how long it had been since the Worm went up-stairs. “Was it one minute or ten?”
There was a sudden new noise outside—a voice. He listened intently. It was Hy Lowe's voice; excited, incoherent, shouting imprecations of some sort. Somebody ought to take Hy home. On any occasion short of the present crisis he would do it himself. Gradually the voice died down.
He heard the side-street door open and close.
Some One had entered the barroom. He tipped back and peered out there. He could see part of a bulky back, a familiarly bulky back. It moved over a little. It was the back of Sumner Smith.
Peter got up, turned, then stood irresolute. It was not, he told himself, that he was afraid of Sumner Smith, only that the mere sight of the man stirred uncomfortable and wild emotions within him.
The best way to get out, in fact the only way now, was through the adjoining room to the door under the front steps. Certainly he couldn't go up-stairs. There might be trouble on the Avenue if the Worm should see him coming out. For a moment he even considered swallowing down all this outrageous emotional upheaval within him and staying there. He had said that Sue would send for him. During ten or twelve seconds out of every sixty he firmly believed she would. It was so in his plays—let the heartless girl, in her heyday, jilt a worthy lover, she was sure in her hours of trial to flee, chastened, to his arms.