ry. 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?"

"Not with you," she replied, evenly. And again the ripple of laughter
spread.

"Why not?"

"Because you're a coward," she said. "I'd rather dance with a Chinaman."

"If you think I'm here because I'm afraid to fight you can think again.
Not that I care what you think."

He had meant to boast a little, to intimate that he had pulled off a big
thing, but he saw that he was ridiculous. The situation infuriated him.
Suddenly he burst into foul-mouthed invective, until one of the girls
said, wearily,

"Oh, cut that out, you slacker."

And he knew that no single word he had used against them, out of a
vocabulary both extensive and horrible, was to them so degraded as that
single one applied to him.

Late that night he received a tip from a dealer at one of vingt-et-un
tables. There were inquiries being made for him across the border. That
very evening he, the dealer, had gone across for a sack of flour, and he
had heard about it.

"You'd better get out," said the dealer.

"I'm as safe here as I'd be in Mexico City."

"Don't be too