The Face of Rosenfeld — page 87: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 THE FACE OF ROSENFEL. When I talked with him about it afterwards and ex- pressed my feelings plainly in a pitying smile, he could not see it even then. ‘ You don’t know what you’ve missed,’ says I. ‘Don’t want to,’ says he. ‘If I got out of bed to listen every time I heard a woman squall, I shouldn’t sleep at all. Women are always crying.’ ” ‘Well, and what became of this man Dye?” “As I was telling you, Mr. Maxey, he was invisible for two days, and then one night I met him coming down stairs with the key of his door in his hand. ‘ Mr. Belfry,’ he says, ‘ business calls me out of town “—them were his very words—‘ My daughter has taken her op- portunity to go and visit friends of hers in the city, Unfortunately she went away in a hurry, and I forgot two things: to leave the key to the rooms with her or te give her any money.’ And thereupon he handed me the key and fetched out of his pocket this very identical bill which I shows you now, Mr. Maxey, and went his ways.” Mr. Belfry passed over for the artist’s scrutiny a clean, new twenty-dollar bill. «This I was to give to the woman should she come back in his absence. But as you have gathered, I guess, I have never set eyes on either of them from that day to this. Which, if I do say it, in the estimation of Belfry has all the ear markings of shy-canery on the face of it.” “Mr. Belfry, you referred to another inquirer after Mr. Dye. Did I understand you it was a woman?” “Very like, Mr. Maxey. Do you know her?” “Well,” returned Maxey in a non-committal way, “what if I do?” The landlord’s left eye closed and opened in a sugges: tive manner. ‘* Name begins with F—eh? Pretty well up? Some- thing of a stunner for looks?”