The Eyes of the World | Page 8

hurrying from the train. Their minds were too intent upon other things to more than glance at this little ripple on the surface of life. Those who had chanced to notice the woman's agitation had seen, also, that she was being cared for; and so had passed on, giving the scene no second thought.
When the man returned from the street to his grips on the depot platform, the hacks and hotel buses were gone. As he stood looking about, questioningly, for some one who might direct him to a hotel, his eyes fell upon a strange individual who was regarding him intently.
Fully six feet in height, the observer was so lean that he suggested the unpleasant appearance of a living skeleton. His narrow shoulders were so rounded, his form was so stooped, that the young man's first thought was to wonder how tall he would really be if he could stand erect. His long, thin face, seamed and lined, was striking in its grotesque ugliness. From under his craggy, scowling brows, his sharp green-gray eyes peered with a curious expression of baffling, quizzing, half pathetic, and wholly cynical, interrogation. He was smoking a straight, much-used brier pipe. At his feet, lay a beautiful Irish Setter dog.
Half hidden by a supporting column of the depot portico--as if to escape the notice of the people in the automobile--he had been watching the woman with the disfigured face, with more than casual interest. He turned, now, upon the young man who had so kindly given her assistance.
In answer to the stranger's inquiry, with a curt sentence and a nod of his head he directed him to a hotel--two blocks away.
Thanking him, the young man, carrying his grips, set out. Upon reaching the street, he involuntarily turned to look back.
The oddly appearing character had not moved from his place, but stood, still looking after the stranger--the brier pipe in his mouth, the Irish Setter at his feet.
Chapter III
The Famous Conrad Lagrange

When the young man reached the hotel, he went at once to his room, where he passed the time between the hour of his arrival and the evening meal.
Upon his return to the lobby, the first object that attracted his eyes was the uncouth figure of the man whom he had seen at the depot, and who had directed him to the hotel.
That oddly appearing individual, his brier pipe still in his mouth and the Irish Setter at his feet, was standing--or rather lounging--at the clerk's counter, bending over the register; an attitude which--making his skeleton-like form more round shouldered than ever--caused him to present the general outlines of a rude interrogation point.
In the dining-room, a few minutes later, the two men sat at adjoining tables; and the young man heard his neighbor bullying the waiters and commenting in an audible undertone, upon every dish that was served to him--swearing by all the heathen gods, known and unknown, that there was nothing fit to eat in the house; and that if it were not for the fact that there was no place else in the cursed town that served half so good, he would not touch a mouthful in the place. Then, to the other's secret amusement he fell to right heartily and made an astonishing meal of the really excellent viands he had so roundly vilified.
Dinner over, the young man went with his cigar to the long veranda; intent upon enjoying the restful quiet of the evening after the tiresome days on the train. Carrying a chair to an unoccupied corner, he had his cigar just nicely under way when the Irish Setter--with all the dignity of his royal blood--approached. Resting a seal-brown head, with its long silky ears, confidently upon the stranger's knee, the dog looked up into the man's face with an expression of hearty good-fellowship in his soft, golden-brown eyes that was irresistible.
"Good dog," said the man, heartily, "good old fellow," and stroked the sleek head and neck, affectionately.
A whiff of pipe smoke drifted over his shoulder, and he looked around. The dog's master stood just behind him; regarding him with that quizzing, half pathetic, half humorous, and altogether cynical expression.
The young man who had been so unresponsive to the advances of his fellow passengers, for some reason--unknown, probably, to himself--now took the initiative. "You have a fine dog here, sir," he said encouragingly.
Without replying, the other turned away and in another moment returned with a chair; whereupon the dog, with slightly waving, feathery tail, transferred his attention to his master.
Caressing the seal-brown head with a gentle hand, and apparently speaking to the soft eyes that looked up at him so understandingly, the man said, "If the human race was fit to associate with such dogs, the world would be a more comfortable place to live in." The deep voice