He had caught the city's name on the end of the man's
steamer trunk and been enraged by it. Hartford was a city of rascals.
The man himself looked capable of any infamy. He was tall and thin, and
wore closely trimmed side-whiskers of a vicious iron gray. He regarded
Bean with manifest hostility and had ostentatiously locked a suit-case
upon his appearance.
So much for his whereabouts. How had he come there? Laboriously, he went
over the events of the afternoon. They were hazy, but certain peaks
jutted above the haze. They were "tagged," as the flapper had surmised
they were going to be. Aboard the little old steamer had appeared Breede
and Julia and the Demon. They had called the flapper aside and
apparently told her something for her own good, though the flapper had
not liked it, and had told them with much spirit that they were to
perfectly mind their own affairs.
Bean had fled into the throng on deck. His hat had received many dents,
and when he emerged to a clear space at the far end of the boat he had
discovered that his perfectly new watch was gone. He was being put upon,
and meekly submitting to it as in that other time when he had not
believed himself to be somebody. He stared moodily over the rail as the
little old steamer moved out. Thousands of people on the dock were
waving handkerchiefs and hats. They seemed to be waving directly at him
and yelling. Above it all, he was back in the bird-and-animal store,
hearing the parrot shriek over and over, "Oh, what a fool! Oh, what a
fool!"
He made an adventurous way through all kinds of hurried people, back to
that group of queerly behaving Breedes.
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