The Brand of Silence | Page 7

a rank amateur, and twice he was almost
insolent. This hotel has a reputation which it scarcely is maintaining
this evening."
"I'll see about it, sir," the head waiter said.
Prale saw him stop the waiter and speak to him, and the waiter glared at
him when he brought the demi-tasse. Prale did not care. He glared back
at the man, drank the coffee, and touched the match to a cigar. Then he
signed the check and went from the dining room, an angry and
disgusted man.
"Another thing like that, and I look for the manager," he told himself.
He supposed that he was a victim of circumstances--that the waiter was
a new man and that it happened that the portions he served were poor
portions. His happiness at being home again prevented Sidney Prale
from feeling anger for any length of time. He got his hat and coat and
went out upon the street again.
He had an hour before time to go to the theater. He walked over to
Broadway and went toward the north, looking at the bright lights and
the crowds. He passed through two or three hotel lobbies, satisfied for
the time merely to be in the midst of the throngs.
At the proper time, he hurried to the theater and claimed his seat. The

performance was a mediocre one, but it pleased Sidney Prale. He had
seen a better show in Honduras a month before, had seen better dancing
and heard better singing and comedy, but this was New York!
The show at an end, Prale claimed his hat and coat at the check room
and walked down the street toward a cabaret restaurant. He reached
into his overcoat pocket for his gloves, and his hand encountered a slip
of paper. He took it out.
There was the same rough handwriting on the same kind of paper, and
evidently with the same blunt pencil.
"Remember--retribution is sure!"
"This thing ceases to be a joke!" Prale told himself.
His face flushed with anger, and he turned back toward the theater. But
he had been among the last to leave, and already the lights of the
playhouse were being turned out. The boy in charge of the check room
would be gone, Prale knew.
He thought of Kate Gilbert again, and the bit of paper she had dropped
as she got into the limousine down on the water front. Surely she could
have no hand in this, he thought. What interest could Kate Gilbert, a
casual acquaintance and reputed daughter of a wealthy house, have in
him and his affairs?
"Somebody is making a mistake," he declared to himself, "or else it is
some sort of a new advertising dodge. If I ever catch the jokesmith who
is responsible for these dainty little messages, I'll tell him a thing or
two."
Prale turned into the restaurant and found a seat at a little table at one
side of the room. The after-theater crowd was filling the place. The
orchestra was playing furiously, and the cabaret performance was
beginning. Sidney Prale leaned back in his chair and watched the show.
The waiter came to his side, and he ordered something to eat and drink.

Then he saw Kate Gilbert again, at a table not very far away from his.
She was dressed in an evening gown, as if she had just come from the
theater or opera. She was in the company of the elderly man who had
met her at the wharf, and a young man and an older woman were at the
same table.
Prale's eyes met hers for an instant, and he inclined his head a bit in a
respectful manner. But Kate Gilbert looked through him as if he had
not been present, and then turned her head and began talking to the
elderly man.
Prale's face flushed. He hadn't done anything wrong, he told himself.
He merely had bowed to her, as he would have bowed to any woman to
whom he had been properly introduced. She had seen fit to cut him.
Well, he could exist without Kate Gilbert, he told himself, but he
wondered at her peculiar manner.
He left the place within the hour and went back to the hotel and to bed.
In the morning he walked up the Avenue as far as the Circle, dropped
into a restaurant for a good breakfast, and then engaged a taxicab and
drove downtown to the financial district. He had remembered that he
was a man with a million, and that he had to pay some attention to
business.
He went into the establishment of a famous trust company and sent his
card in to the president. An attendant ushered him into the president's
private office immediately.
"Sit down, Mr. Prale," said