He went out to sit on the porch, cool now with the evening breeze off Lake Michigan. Sitting with his back against a post, and looking as if he had not shifted his position since Jim saw him early in the afternoon, was the gentleman of the white socks and calico shirt. He did not look up as Jim passed to take a chair at the end of the piazza.
Presently there drew up before the hotel a ramshackle buggy drawn by an animal that was undoubtedly still a horse. It was a very Methuselah among horses. The old man who rode in the buggy appeared comparatively youthful beside it. Jim smiled at the turnout, then frowned a trifle, for the old man was the same individual who had rebuffed him so bruskly at the depot.
“Hey!” called the old gentleman, without straightening himself from the amazing position in which he sat. “Hey, Dolf—Dolf Springer!”
“Eh?” the gentleman in the white socks grunted, sitting erect and gazing about him owlishly.
“Was you at the depot to see the six-o’clock come in, Dolf? Eh?”
“Anybody git off, Dolf? Anybody special?”
“Lafe Jenks and his wife, Mandy Williams, Tom Sweet, two travelin’-men—”
“Well, last to git down was Michael Moran, Judge.”
“Um! What become of him, Dolf? Happen to notice?”
“Calc’late to be here till Moran comes out?”
“What was you goin’ to speak about? The weather? Eh?”
“Was you goin’ to mention me? Eh? Figger on alludin’ to me?”
“Thought I might mention you was askin’ after him.”
“Um! Goin’ to tell him where I was headin’ for? Eh? Think of doin’ that?”
“Figgered I’d mention you was to your office.”
The old man clucked to his horse: “Giddap, Tiffany! G’long there! Time’s passin’ rapid for both of us. Don’t waste none of it. G’long!” The equipage drew slowly away from the hotel and proceeded down the street at a rate of speed which came close to being no movement at all, until it came to a halt again before a frame building at the end of the block. Here the old man alighted, hitched his horse as carefully as if the animal were a two-year-old showing signs of a desire to bolt. Then he went inside.
In ten minutes a man of middle age, not at all the Diversity type of citizen, appeared in the doorway. He was below medium height, sturdily built, with a face of the aggressive-business-man variety. Dolf Springer uncoiled by a mighty effort and rose to his feet.