It was Graydon's first visit to the place, weeks after their return to New York. He had not felt friendly to Droom since the day at the prison; but now he was forgetting his resentment, in the determination to wrest from him the names of Jane's father and mother. He was confident that the old man knew.
"Better than Wells Street, eh? Well, you see, I was in trade then. Different now. I'm getting to be quite a fop. Do you notice that I say 'By Jove' occasionally?" He gave his raucous laugh of derision. "Dined at Sherry's the other night, old chap," he went on with raw mimicry. "They thought I was a Christian and let me in. I used to look like the devil, you know."
"By the Lord Harry, Elias," cried Graydon, "you look like the devil now."
"I've got these carpet slippers on because my shoes hurt my feet," explained Droom sourly. "My collar rubbed my neck, so I took it off. Otherwise, I'm just as I was when I got in at Sherry's. Funny what a difference a little thing like a collar makes, isn't it?"
"I should say so. I never gave it a thought until now. But, Elias, I want to ask a great favour of you. You can--"
"My boy, if your father wouldn't tell you who her parents are, don't expect me to do so. He knows; I only suspect."
"You must be a mind reader," gasped Graydon.
"It isn't hard to read your mind these days. What do you hear from her?" Graydon went back to the subject after a few moments. "I am morally certain that I know who her father and mother were, but it won't do any good to tell her. It didn't make me any better to learn who my father was. It made me wiser, that's all. How's your father?"
After this night Graydon saw the old man often. They dined together occasionally in the small cafes on the West Side. Droom could not, for some reason known only to himself, be induced to go to Sherry's again.
"When Jane comes back, I'll give you both a quiet little supper there after the play maybe. It'll be my treat, my boy."
The old man worked patiently and fruitlessly over his "inventions." They came to naught, but they lightened his otherwise barren existence. There was not a day or night in which his mind was wholly free from thoughts of James Bansemer.
He counted the weeks and days until the man would be free, and his eyes narrowed with these furtive glances into the future. He felt in his heart that James Bansemer would come to him at once, and that the reckoning for his single hour of triumph would be a heavy one to pay. Sometimes he would sit for hours with his eyes staring at the Napoleon above the bookcase, something like dread in their depths. Then again he would laugh with glee, pound the table with his bony hand--much to the consternation of Chang--and exclaim as if addressing a multitude: "I hope I'll be dead when he gets out of there! I hope I won't live to see him, free again. That would spoil everything. Let me see, I'm seventy-one now; I surely can't live much longer. I want to die seeing him as I saw him that day. The last thing I think of on earth must be James Bansemer's face behind the bars. Ha, ha, ha! It was worth all the years, that one hour! It was even worth while being his slave. I'm not afraid of him! No! That's ridiculous. Of course, I'm not afraid of him. I only want to know he's lying in a cell when I die out here in the great, free world! By my soul, he'll know that a handsome face isn't always the best. He laughed at my face, curse him. His face won her--his good looks! Well, well, well, I only hope she's where she can see his face now!"