chance of getting an early cup of coffee at this hotel, Hewson finished
dressing, and crept down stairs to let himself out of the house.

He not only found the door locked, as he had expected, but the key taken
out; and after some misgiving he decided to lift one of the long library
windows, from which he could get into the garden, closing the window
after him, and so make his escape. No one was stirring outside the house
any more than within; he knocked down a trellis by which a clematis was
trying to climb over the window he emerged from, and found his way out of
the grounds without alarming any one. He was not so successful at the
hotel, where a lank boy, sweeping the long piazzas, recognized one of the
St. Johnswort guests in the figure approaching the steps, and apparently
had his worst fears roused for Hewson's sanity when Hewson called to him
and wondered if he could get a cup of coffee at that hour; he openly
owned it was an unnatural hour, and he had a fine inward sense that it
was supernatural. The boy dropped his broom without a word, and vanished
through the office door, reappearing after a blank interval to pick up
his broom and say, "I guess so," as he began sweeping again. It was well,
for one reason that he did not state his belief too confidently, Hewson
thought; but after another interval of unknown length a rude, sad girl
came to tell him his coffee was waiting for him. He followed her back
into the still dishevelled dining room, and sat down at a long table to a
cup of lukewarm drink that in color and quality recalled terrible
mornings of Atlantic travel when he haplessly rose and descended to the
dining-saloon of the steamer, and had a marine version of British coffee
brought him by an alien table-steward.

He remembered the pock-marked nose of one alien steward, and how he had
questioned whether he should give the fellow six-pence or a shilling,
seeing that apart from this tribute he should have to fee his own steward