As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he leaned close.
"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and paddled hers.
Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his pocket.
"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him when he went out."
Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his palms—a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very quintessence of humor—the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, and exclaimed:
"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!"
"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned—and looked into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek.
"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his paternal way.
"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?"