o break the big chunk of ice which
Kuroki had brought him, into half a dozen smaller pieces. These
smaller lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket,
wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking. Then he put the cover on
the bucket to exclude the air.

The zinc bucket was thus a portable refrigerator, or rather, ice house.

Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket
for immediate use, Elmer carefully and methodically broke it into still
smaller pieces--pieces about the size of an English walnut, but
irregular in shape. Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole
in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong box and dropped in
twenty or more of the little pieces of ice. When a piece proved to be
too big to go through the funnel Elmer broke it again.

Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box,
and that Elmer was slowly working his way down the length of it from
hole to hole, sitting astride of it the while.

From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved
every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste
not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great
satisfaction from his task, let alone joy. In fact, Elmer seemed to be
a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst.
On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as
"pasty," melancholy sat enthroned. His nose was flat and broad, and
flat and broad were his cheek bones, too. His hair was cut very short
everywhere except in front; in front it hung down to his eyebrows in a
straggling black fringe or "bang." Not that the fringe would have
covered the average person's forehead; this "bang" was not long; but
the truth is that Elmer's forehead was lower than the average person's
and therefore easily covered. He had what is known in certain circles
as a cauliflower, or chrysanthemum, ear.

But melancholy as he looked, Elmer had evidently had his moments of
struggle against dejection. One of these moments had been when he
bought the clothes he was wearing. His hat had a bright, red and black
band around it; his tweed suit was of a startling light gray, marked
off into checks with stripes of green; his waistcoat was of lavender,
and his hose were likewise of lavender, but red predominated in both
his shirt and his necktie. His collar was too high for his short neck,
and seemed to cause him d