But Tom Marshall's spirits grew higher as the night grew older. He was immensely comfortable with his beer and cigarettes, immensely amused at the argument which was going on behind my back.
"You really must meet Andrew. You will enjoy him, Malcolm," he said. "I'll call him over when he is through with those men. He is a character worth knowing."
"You speak of him as if you had known him for a long time," I returned, and I think my lips must have curled a little; but if I was unappreciative of the hospitality which I was enjoying, my excuse was my great weariness.
"Oh dear, no," he demurred; "I've been coming here for years--late at night, you understand, for a bite occasionally. I never saw him until last fall--got talking to him--I always like to talk to waiters, to get their ideas. I found him a curious chap, better educated than most of them and surprisingly well informed--surprisingly. He seemed to have knocked around a good deal."
"Had been a waiter in Hoboken, I suppose," said I, "and in Philadelphia----"
"In Hoboken!" My sarcasm nettled Marshall. "He told me that he had never been a waiter at all until he came here; he was simply looking for an opportunity to find something really congenial. He was fresh from Canton. In Hoboken!" Tom Marshall leaned toward me aggressively. "Why, man, he has been everywhere--through the South Seas, in----"
There _was_ something familiar in the tall, thin figure, something that even the waiter's jacket and the waving napkin could not hide.
I had half risen from my chair and turned. Talcott and Grant were leaning over their table, elbows resting there, heads close together. And behind Talcott's chair the black figure was bent until the hands could touch the floor. He was brushing up scattered crumbs. As I looked, he raised his head, and it seemed to me that he had forgotten his menial task, had forgotten his menial place, for he was very still. He was no longer dusting. The napkin fell from his outstretched hand. He was listening to the muttered, maudlin conversation as though from the chaos of it he gathered some sober words of truth.
I looked at my companion. "In the South Seas, you said, Marshall. Has he spoken of San Francisco? Do you know his name?"