“I can't go in there and sit by myself all alone,” said Hawkins hoarsely. “I--I'd go mad. It's--it's like as though they'd told me to-night that she'd died--same as they told me about her mother the night I went to Paul's.”
The car moved slowly onward. It turned the next corner--and the next. It almost completed the circuit of the block. Hawkins now was wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. His hands on the wheel were trembling. The car had stopped. Hawkins was staring again at the lighted windows and the swinging doors of the saloon.
He sat for a long time motionless; then he climbed down from his seat.
“Just one,” Hawkins whispered to himself. “Just one. I--I'd go mad if I didn't.”
Hawkins pushed the swinging doors open, and sidled up to the bar.
“Hello, Hawkins!” grinned the barkeeper. “Been out of town? I ain't seen you the whole afternoon!”
“You mind your own business!” said Hawkins surlily.
“Sure!” nodded the barkeeper cheerily. “Same as usual?” He slid a square-faced bottle and a glass toward the old man.
Hawkins helped himself and drank moodily. He set his empty glass back on the bar, jerked down his shabby vest and straightened up, his eyes resolutely fixed on the door. Then he felt in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco. His eyes shifted from the door to his pipe. He filled it slowly.
“Give me another,” said Hawkins presently--without looking at the barkeeper.
Again the old man drank, and jerked down his vest, and squared his thin shoulders. He lighted his pipe, tamping the bowl carefully with his forefinger. His eyes sought the swinging doors once more.
“I'm going home,” said Hawkins defiantly to himself. “I've got to think this out.” He dug into his vest pocket for money, and produced a few small bills. He stared at these for a moment, hesitated, started to replace them in his pocket, hesitated again, and the tip of his tongue circled his lips; then he pushed the money across the bar. “Take the drinks out of that, and--and give me a bottle,” he said. “I--I don't like to be without anything in the house, and I got to go home.”
“You said something!” said the barkeeper. “Have one on the house before you go?”
“No,” said Hawkins with stern determination.
Hawkins crowded the bottle into the side pocket of his coat, passed out through the swinging doors, and resumed his seat on the car. And again the car started forward. But it went faster now. Hawkins' face was flushed; he seemed nervously and excitedly in haste. At the driveway he turned in, garaged his car in an old shed at the rear of one of the houses, locked the shed with a padlock, and, by way of the back door, entered the house that was in front of the shed.