Mr. Cone knew it was coming. He felt the symptoms which warned him that he was going to "fly off the handle." He leaned over the counter. Mrs. Stott's eyes were so close together that, like Cyclops, she seemed to have but one, and they had the appearance of growing even closer as Mr. Cone looked into them.
"Do not give yourself any concern on that score, madam. Your trunks will be at the station as soon as they are ready and it will please me if you will follow them.
"For twelve years I have been pretending not to know that you used the hotel soap to do your washing in the bath-tub, and it is a relief to mention it to you.
"And, Miss Gaskett," the deadly coldness of his voice made her shiver, "I doubt if the fuzz under your bed has troubled you as much as the fact that for three summers your cat has had kittens in the linen closet has annoyed me."
The Baltimore widow had his attention: "It is possible that the drip from your faucet and the squeak in your rocking-chair gets on your nerves, my dear lady, but not more than your daily caterwauling on the hotel piano gets on mine.
"I shall miss your check, certainly, Mr. Appel, but not nearly so much as I shall enjoy the relief from listening to the story of the way you got your start as a 'breaker-boy' in the coal region."
He bowed with the irony of Mephistopheles to Mrs. Budlong: "Instead of discharging the man with the vacuum cleaner, I shall give him for his large family the cake and fruit you would have carried away from the table in your capacious pocket if you had been here."
His eyes swept them all.
He would have given Mr. Budlong his attention, but that person's vanishing back was all he could see of him, so he turned to the others and shouted: "Go! The sooner the better. Get out of my sight--the lot of you! I'M GOING TO A REST CURE!"
His hand travelled toward the potato he used as a pen-wiper and there was something so significant in the action when taken in connection with his menacing expression that, without a word, they obeyed him.