Doret lighted a cigarette. "How are they hitting you?" he asked
negligently.
"Bad; but the season ain't opened up right yet. It'll have to soon,
though, if they want me; gas has gone to where it's like shoving
champagne into your car."
"The cafes doing anything?"
"None except the Torquay; but the cabaret they got takes all the
profits. That's on the front. Then there's the World, back of the town.
It's colored, but white go. Quite a place--I saw a sailor come out last
night hashed with a knife."
He found the Torquay, a place of brilliant illumination and color,
packed with tables about a dancing floor, and small insistent
orchestra. He sat against the wall by the entrance, apparently sunk in
apathy, but his vision searched the crowd like the cutting bar of light
thrown on the intermittent singers. He renewed his order. Toward
midnight a fresh influx of people swept in; his search was unsatisfied.
The cigarette girl, pinkly pretty with an exaggerated figure, carrying
a wooden tray with her wares, stopped at his gesture.
"Why don't you hang that about your neck with something?" he inquired.
"And get round shouldered!" she demanded. Her manner became
confidential. "I do get fierce tired," she admitted; "nine till two-
thirty."
He asked for a particular brand of cigarette.
"We haven't got them." She studied him with a memorizing frown. "They
are hardly ever asked for; and now--yes, there was a man, last night, I
think----"
"He must have made an impression.
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