Reginald Wright Kauffman

“ Dan stood his ground.
At first, scarcely anything was to he seen there. A bullet-shaped head—a head like a modern elongated bullet stood on end, with wide ears flanking it, or like those conical spikes, balanced by steel wings, which airmen dropped in the later raids of the World War. ”

“ Well, that was not unusual, and the manager of this place gave no hint of sharing Stone's feelings about Johnson's table mates, though, to be sure, the manager was fonder of his stock than he ought to be, and perhaps this dulled the fine edge of that caution which is requisite to succeed in such a trade. What, anyhow, roused Dan's doubts?
Their subjects were unshaven men in suits that had seen hard usage. Both were muscular and both uncouth. They ought to belong here—and yet they didn't. They were not seafaring men; they were not longshoremen. ”

“ There was absolutely no reason in the world why such an invitation should be accepted by a hard-working, sober-living medical student whose sole ambition lay strictly within the limits of his chosen profession and whose scarcely indulged hobby was—of all things conceivable—the study of that Spanish-American church architecture no true example of which he had ever seen. Dan knew that this neighborhood was a precarious one. He knew that he faced a man subject to a form of brutality that Stone, for his part, always found especially repellent. ”