Read Online Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway - Free Book Online

and then five minutes past seven.
    “Come on, Al,” said Max. “We better go. He’s not coming.”
    “Better give him five minutes,” Al said from the kitchen.
    In the five minutes a man came in, and George explained that the cook was sick.
    “Why the hell don’t you get another cook?” the man asked. “Aren’t you running a lunch-counter?” He went out.
    “Come on, Al,” Max said.
    “What about the two bright boys and the nigger?”
    “They’re all right.”
    “You think so?”
    “Sure. We’re through with it.”
    “I don’t like it,” said Al. “It’s sloppy. You talk too much.”
    “Oh, what the hell,” said Max. “We got to keep amused, haven’t we?”
    “You talk too much, all the same,” Al said. He came out from the kitchen. The cut-off barrels of the shotgun made a slight bulge under the waist of his too tight-fitting overcoat. He straightened his coat with his gloved hands.
    “So long, bright boy,” he said to George. “You got a lot of luck.”
    “That’s the truth,” Max said. “You ought to play the races, bright boy.”
    The two of them went out of the door. George watched them, through the window, pass under the arc-light, and cross the street. In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team. George went back through the swinging-door into the kitchen and untied Nick and the cook.
    “I don’t want any more of that,” said Sam, the cook. “I don’t want any more of that.”
    Nick stood up. He had never had a towel in his mouth before.
    “Say,” he said. “What the hell?” He was trying to swagger it off.
    “They were going to kill Ole Andreson,” George said. “They were going to shoot him when he came in to eat.”
    “Ole Andreson?”
    “Sure.”
    The cook felt the corners of his mouth with his thumbs.
    “They all gone?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” said George. “They’re gone now.”
    “I don’t like it,” said the cook. “I don’t like any of it at all.”
    “Listen,” George said to Nick. “You better go see Ole Andreson.”
    “All right.”
    “You better not have anything to do with it at all,” Sam, the cook, said. “You better stay way out of it.”
    “Don’t go if you don’t want to,” George said.
    “Mixing up in this ain’t going to get you anywhere,” the cook said. “You stay out of it.”
    “I’ll go see him,” Nick said to George. “Where does he live?”
    The cook turned away.
    “Little boys always know what they want to do,” he said.
    “He lives up at Hirsch’s rooming-house,” George said to Nick.
    “I’ll go up there.”
    Outside, the arc-light shone through the bare branches of a tree. Nick walked up the street beside the car-tracks and turned at the next arc-light down a side-street. Three houses up the street was Hirsch’s rooming-house. Nick walked up the two steps and pushed the bell. A woman came to the door.
    “Is Ole Andreson here?”
    “Do you want to see him?”
    “Yes, if he’s in.”
    Nick followed the woman up a flight of stairs and back to the end of the corridor. She knocked on the door.
    “Who is it?”
    “It’s somebody to see you, Mr. Andreson,” the woman said.
    “It’s Nick Adams.”
    “Come in.”
    Nick opened the door and went into the room. Ole Andreson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He had been a heavyweight prize-fighter and he was too long for the bed. He lay with his head on two pillows. He did not look at Nick.
    “What was it?” he asked.
    “I was up at Henry’s,” Nick said, “and two fellows came in and tied up me and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you.”
    It sounded silly when he said it. Ole Andreson said nothing.
    “They put us out in the kitchen,” Nick went on. “They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper.”
    Ole Andresen looked at the wall and did not say anything.
    “George thought I’d better come and tell you about it.”
    “There isn’t anything I can do about it,” Ole