The Rapids by Alan Sullivan — Read

It was a large room with bare floor, painted walls and a flat sounding-board of a ceiling. Across the end was the platform, and immediately above the platform table hung a large brass lamp which could be lowered by a chain that ran along the ceiling and down the adjoining wall. Around the main walls and between the windows were smaller lamps in wire brackets, which burned with a steady, yellow light, and occasionally gave off a thin trickle of smoke that filled the room with the sharp odor of soot. On the platform sat Clark and Filmer on either side of the table, and on the table stood an enormous jug of water and one glass.

At five minutes past eight the hall was crowded. Manson was there, sitting in the front row, and leaning forward on his heavy oak stick which seemed a very bludgeon of authority. Beside him sat his wife, small, slight and gentle, the very antithesis of her dark and formidable husband. Manson's eyes roved from Filmer to Clark and back again to Filmer, but the two looked over his head and seemed no whit disconcerted. A little further back were the Dibbotts, the former turning his big gray-coated body, and every now and then surveying the growing audience with his small blue eyes, while his lips pushed in and out, which was in Dibbott a certain sign that he was thinking hard. Mrs. Dibbott, tall, slim, and square shouldered, turned her kindly capable face toward Clark, and felt the first intimation of that keen interest he always roused, especially in the women who met him. He seemed so alert, such a free agent and, it must be confessed, so disgracefully independent of the gentler sex.