"Tell you it ain't you. I know you!"
Charley Carpenter's pale face leered out. His tousled hair was stuck to his forehead by perspiration; his eyes were red and vaguely staring. His clothes were badlv wrinkled. He wore a collarless shirt with a frilled bosom of virulent pink, its cuffs grimy and limp.
"It's ol' Wrenn. C'm in. C'm in quick. Collectors always hanging around. They can't catch me. You bet."
He closed the door and wabbled swiftly down the long drab hall of the "railroad flat," evidently trying to walk straight. The reeking stifling main room at the end of the hall was terrible as Charley's eyes. Flies boomed everywhere. The oak table, which Charley and his bride had once spent four happy hours in selecting, was littered with half a dozen empty whisky-flasks, collars, torn sensational newspapers, dirty plates and coffee-cups. The cheap brocade cover, which a bride had once joyed to embroider with red and green roses, was half pulled off and dragged on the floor amid the cigarette butts, Durham tobacco, and bacon rinds which covered the green-and-yellow carpet-rug.
This much Mr. Wrenn saw. Then he set himself to the hard task of listening to Charley, who was muttering: "Back quick, ain't you, ol' Wrenn? You come up to see me, didn't you? You're m' friend, ain't you, eh? I got an awful hang-over, ain't I? You don't care, do you, ol' Wrenn?"
Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute. Perhaps it was his cattle-boat experience which now made him deal directly with such drunkenness as would have nauseated him three months before; perhaps his attendance on a weary Istra.
"Come now, Charley, you got to buck up," he crooned.
"All ri'."
"What's the trouble? How did you get going like this?"
"Wife left me. I was drinking. You think I'm drunk, don't you? But I ain't. She went off with her sister--always hated me. She took my money out of savings-bank--three hundred; all money I had 'cept fifty dollars. I'll fix her. I'll kill her. Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle fired me. Don't care. Drink all I want. Keep young fellows from getting it! Say, go down and get me pint. Just finished up pint. Got to have one-die of thirst. Bourbon. Get--"
"I'll go and get you a drink, Charley--just one drink, savvy?--if you'll promise to get cleaned up, like I tell you, afterward."
"All ri'."
Mr. Wrenn hastened out with a whisky-flask, muttering, feverishly, "Gee! I got to save him." Returning, he poured out one drink, as though it were medicine for a refractory patient, and said, soothingly: "Now we'll take a cold bath, heh? and get cleaned up and sobered up. Then we'll talk about a job, heh?"