the place.

CHAPTER XIX

Newton's eating places were not appetizing at best, but a meal could be
endured with less discomfort by night than by day, for at such times
most of the flies were on the ceilings. The restaurant Gray entered was
about what he had expected; along one side ran a quick-order counter at
which were seated several customers; across from it was an
oilcloth-covered table, perfectly bare except for a revolving
centerpiece--one of those silver-plated whirligigs fitted with a glass
salt-and-pepper shaker, a toothpick holder, an unpleasant oil bottle,
and a cruet intended for vinegar, but now filled with some mysterious
embalming fluid acting as a preservative of numerous lifelike insect
remains. Here, facing an elderly man in a wide gray-felt hat, Gray
seated himself.

Gray's neighbor was in no pleasant mood, for he whacked impatiently at
such buzzing pests as were still on the wing, and when a perspiring
Greek set a plate of soup before him he took umbrage at the presence of
the fellow's thumb in the liquid. The argument that followed angered
the old man still further, for it arrived nowhere except to prove that
the offending thumb was the property of the proprietor of the
restaurant, and by inference, therefore, a privileged digit.

When a departing customer left the door open, the elderly diner
grumbled bitterly at the draught and draped his overcoat over his bent
shoulders.

"Dam' Eskimos!" he muttered. "----raised in a chicken coop--Windy as a
derrick!"

Gray liked old people, and he was tolerant of their crotchets.
Irascibility indicates force of character, at least so he believed, and
old folks are apt to accept too meekly the approach of decay. Here was
a spirit that time had not dulled--it was like wine soured in an old
cask. At any rate, wine it had been, not water, and that was something.

Most of the counter customers had drifted out when, without warning,
the screen door banged loudly open and Gray looked up from his plate to
see his recent acquaintance of the gambling table approaching. This
time purpose was stamped upon the man's face, but whether it was
deliberate or merely the result of more drinking there was no telling.
He lurched directly up to the table and stared across at Gray.

"Slapped my face, didn't you?" he cried, after a menacing moment.

"I did, indeed," the speaker nodded, pleasantly.

"You ain't going to slap it again. You ain't going to slap anybody's--"