Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/291



EDNEY"—who sold chewing-gum and prize packages on the various floors of the old Bowery Musée—stopped at the door of Madame Carlotta's gipsy tent and grinned in at Madame. "Well," he said, "how 's the game goin'? Been holdin' any warm hands lately?"

It was a gipsy tent that might have served as a Turkish cozy corner in a Harlem flat; and Madame Carlotta, plump and comfortable, dressed in a scarlet kimono, among soiled bespangled cushions, looked almost as gipsy-like and nomadic as a fat house cat looks tigerish. She was occupying her spare moments by furtively darning the heels of the Professor's socks, looking down her nose through the glasses of an old-fashioned pince-nez that was poised on her nose tip as if it had slid down there to cling to boneless pudginess in the last feeble grip of exhaustion. It was a nose to discourage anything but a carpenter's vise, and the spring of the pince-nez had been worn weak—reading palms. In private life, of course, she used spectacles.

She looked up at Redney, carefully, mindful of the glasses.

"Yuh 'll sneeze some day," he said, "an' get them goggles stuck in yer throat."