At first Rudolph was popular in this hell of the underworld. He spent

money easily, he danced well, he had audacity and a sort of sardonic

humor. They asked no questions, those poor wretches who had themselves

slid over the edge of life. They took what came, grateful for little

pleasures, glad even to talk their own tongue.

And then, one broiling August day, late in the afternoon, when the

compound was usually seething with the first fetid life of the day,

Rudolph found it suddenly silent when he entered it, and hostile,

contemptuous eyes on him.

A girl with Anna Klein's eyes, a girl he had begun to fancy, suddenly

said, "Draft-dodger!"

There was a ripple of laughter around the compound. They commenced to

bait him, those women he would not have wiped his feet on at home. They

literally laughed him out of the compound.

He went home to his stifling, windowless adobe room, with its sagging

narrow bed, its candle, its broken crockery, and he stood in the center

of the room and chewed his nails with fury. After a time he sat down and

considered what to do next. He would have to move on some time. As well

now as ever. He was sick of the place.

He began preparations to move on, gathering up the accumulation of

months of careless living for destruction. He picked up some newspapers

preparatory to throwing them away, and a name caught his attention.

Standing there, inside his doorway in the Mexican dusk, he read of

Graham's recent wounding, his mending, and the fact that he had won the

Croix de Guerre. Supreme bitterness was Rudolph's then.

"Stage stuff!" he muttered. But in the depths of his warped soul there

was bitter envy. He knew well with what frightened yet adoring eyes Anna

Klein had devoured that news of Graham Spencer. While for him there

was the girl in the compound back of the "Owl," with Anna Klein's eyes,

filled when she looked at him with that bitterest scorn of all, the

contempt of the wholly contemptible.

That night he went to the Owl. He had shaved and had his hair cut and

he wore his only remaining decent suit of clothes. He passed through the

swinging gate in the railing which separated the dancing-floor from the

tables and went up to the line of girls, sitting in that saddest waiting

of all the world, along the wall. There was an ominous silence at his

approach. He planted himself in front of the girl with eyes like Anna

Klein.

"Are you going to dance?"




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