Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/54

42 It was enough for him to see hers. Not that she was beautiful—or even of an interesting ugliness. He thought her merely plain looking, with a nose too large. What he saw in her face was the evidence that her customer was annoying her; and as Larry watched her, he added his irritated embarrassment about his own toilet to an accession of uncultured contempt for the man who could loll back, ogling, in a barber shop, while a woman polished his nails.

The barber slewed Larry's head around—first this way and then that way—with the masterful hand of his trade; and Larry caught but fleeting glimpses of the girl's reddened ears and frigid haughtiness. The man was leaning forward on one elbow, a roll of flesh bulging above his collar. Larry's slanted eye fixed on that fat roll malevolently for a moment before the barber swung him around again. And when he was sheared and sleeked down with bay rum and out of the chair finally, he reached for his hat—with his eyes on the remembered neck—just as the girl, dropping her chamois pad, looked up appealingly at the barber as if for aid against insult.

Larry stepped forward, jabbed his fingers in between the neck and the collar, and raised the man with one hand while he withdrew the chair with the other. The tightened collar prevented any but a guttural, choked outcry. Larry jerked him clear of the table and propelled him swiftly toward the screen door, shoved him through that, ran him across the sidewalk, and there, bumping him behind with a bent knee, sent him