His grief was that no one
in the Tenderloin would take him seriously; would believe him
wicked, wise, predatory. They might love him, they might laugh
with him, they might clamor for his company, in no flat that
could boast a piano, was he not, on his entrance, greeted with a
shout; but the real Knights of the Highway treated him always as
the questioning, wide-eyed child. In spite of his after-midnight
pallor, in spite of his honorable scars of dissipation, it was
his misfortune to be cursed with a smile that was a perpetual
plea of "not guilty."
"What can you expect?" an outspoken friend, who made a living as
a wireless wire tapper, had once pointed out to him. "That smile
of yours could open a safe. It could make a show girl give up
money! It's an alibi for everything from overspeeding to
murder."
Mannie, as he listened, flushed with mortification. From that
moment he determined that his life should be devoted to giving
the lie to that smile, to that outward and visible sign of
kindness, good will, and innate innocence. As yet, he had not
succeeded.
He interrupted Mabel at the telephone to inquire the whereabouts
of Vera. "There's two girls in there, now," he said, "waiting to
have their fortunes doped."
"Let'em wait!" exclaimed Mabel. "Vera's upstairs dressing." In
her eyes was the baleful glare of the plunger. "What was that
you give me in the third race?"
At the first touch of the ruling passion, what interest Mannie
may have felt for the impatient visitors vanished.
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