The Man with the Squeaky Voice

Tod Challenger, cutting off the end of his cigar, watched the Man with
the Squeaky Voice steer his way between the dining tables, glancing
nervously from side to side, and disappear through the doorway.

"By Heaven, Masters!" said he, "if ever I saw Fear in a man's eyes,
that's where."

"A strange, furtive fellow," said I.

"Furtive, is it? Your vocabulary wants a tonic, my son. He's simply
soused in Fear! He was even afraid of you! What better evidence do you
want?"

I flicked an almond at Tod, though he was by much my senior.

"He seemed quite chatty with you, Tod. Merely proof that I've the far
more formidable personality."

"He was chatty with me because I'm an American. The formidable element
in your personality, young Masters, was that you're an Englishman. And
at this moment Pasty-face is afraid of his fellow-countrymen. When he
heard your pretty Oxford accents, he just went green!"

Tod's picturesque account of it was roughly true. The dining-room at the
Antlers Hotel had been rather full, and a waiter had taken us to a small
square table at which already sat a man of middle age, who looked
annoyed at the disturbance of his solitude. A well-preserved man, with
hardly a gray hair, he wore a thick dark mustache. His figure was
athletic, but he had the sallowest complexion I have ever seen and the
squeakiest voice I have ever heard.

Challenger has the American capacity for intercourse highly developed,
and the charm that disarms resentment. So before he had eaten his soup
he had the squeaky-voiced man in amicable conversation.

He seemed a well-educated man, and, in spite of his peculiarities, would
not have been an unpleasant companion but for his furtive nervousness of
manner.

Then it was as Tod said. I had no sooner opened my mouth than he froze
up. He dropped his fork on the table and looked at me with a start of
alarm. His pallid face took on a literally ghastly hue. Presently he
rose, squeaked a word of apology, and was winding his way out between
the tables.

We did not see him again.

"That man," Tod summed up, "is living in Hell."

Tod Challenger and I had become friends in London. I was almost a
greenhorn in the office of the _Morning Telegram_, and Tod, a man of
forty, was a mature and even a famous journalist. His American paper
used the _Morning Telegram_ services and had an office in that new and
lordly building of ours which was one of the wonders of Fleet Street.
Having taken a liking to me, Tod had persuaded Allen, the news-editor,
to commission me for a series of articles on what he called "the
American scene." It simply meant a jolly tour of the United States in
Tod's company. Now, almost at the end of it, we had come down to
Colorado Springs to have a quiet day or two at the Antlers Hotel. And
here on our first evening we met the Man with the Squeaky Voice.

The Man with the Squeaky Voice