Fifty men were eating when Aldous went in, devouring their soup with the utter abandon and joy of the Galician, so that the noise they made was like the noise of fifty pigs at fifty troughs.  Now and then DeBar, the half-breed, came here for soup, and Aldous searched quickly for him.  He was turning to go when his friend, Lovak, came to him.  No, Lovak had not seen DeBar.  But he had news.  That day the authorities—­the police—­had confiscated twenty dressed hogs, and in each porcine carcass they had found four-quart bottles of whisky, artistically imbedded in the leaf-lard fat.  The day before those same authorities had confiscated a barrel of “kerosene.”  They were becoming altogether too officious, Lovak thought.

Aldous went on.  He looked in at a dozen restaurants, and twice as many soft-drink emporiums, where phonographs were worked until they were cracked and dizzy.  He stopped at a small tobacco shop, and entered to buy himself some cigars.  There was one other customer ahead of him.  He was lighting a cigar, and the light of a big hanging lamp flashed on a diamond ring.  Over his sputtering match his eyes met those of John Aldous.  They were dark eyes, neither brown nor black, but dark, with the keenness and strange glitter of a serpent’s.  He wore a small, clipped moustache; his hands were white; he was a man whom one might expect to possess the sang froid of a devil in any emergency.  For barely an instant he hesitated in the operation of lighting his cigar as he saw Aldous.  Then he nodded.

“Hello, John Aldous,” he said.

“Good evening, Culver Rann,” replied Aldous.

For a moment his nerves had tingled—­the next they were like steel.  Culver Rann’s teeth gleamed.  Aldous smiled back.  They were cold, hard, rapierlike glances.  Each understood now that the other was a deadly enemy, for Quade’s enemies were also Culver Rann’s.  Aldous moved carelessly to the glass case in which were the cigars.  With the barest touch of one of his slim white hands Culver Rann stopped him.

“Have one of mine, Aldous,” he invited, opening a silver case filled with cigars.  “We’ve never had the pleasure of smoking together, you know.”

“Never,” said Aldous, accepting one of the cigars.  “Thanks.”

As he lighted it, their eyes met again.  Aldous turned to the case.

“Half a dozen ‘Noblemen,’” he said to the man behind the counter; then, to Rann:  “Will you have one on me?”

“With pleasure,” said Rann.  He added, smiling straight into the other’s eyes, “What are you doing up here, Aldous?  After local colour?”

“Perhaps.  The place interests me.”

“It’s a lively town.”

“Decidedly.  And I understand that you’ve played an important part in the making of it,” replied Aldous carelessly.

For a flash Rann’s eyes darkened, and his mouth hardened, then his white teeth gleamed again.  He had caught the insinuation, and he had scarcely been able to ward off the shot.