“Good Lord!” said the Sausage Chappie.
“Now what?” said Archie.
“Who’s that? Over at the table there?”
Archie, through long attendance at the Cosmopolis Grill, knew most of the habitues by sight.
“That’s a man named Gossett. James J. Gossett. He’s a motion-picture man. You must have seen his name around.”
“I don’t mean him. Who’s the girl?”
“I’ve never seen her before.”
“It’s my wife!” said the Sausage Chappie.
“Your wife!”
“Yes!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“Well, well, well!” said Archie. “Many happy returns of the day!”
At the other table, the girl, unconscious of the drama which was about to enter her life, was engrossed in conversation with the stout man. And at this moment the stout man leaned forward and patted her on the cheek.
It was a paternal pat, the pat which a genial uncle might bestow on a favourite niece, but it did not strike the Sausage Chappie in that light. He had been advancing on the table at a fairly rapid pace, and now, stirred to his depths, he bounded forward with a hoarse cry.
Archie was at some pains to explain to his father-in-law later that, if the management left cold pies and things about all over the place, this sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. He urged that it was putting temptation in people’s way, and that Mr. Brewster had only himself to blame. Whatever the rights of the case, the Buffet Froid undoubtedly came in remarkably handy at this crisis in the Sausage Chappie’s life. He had almost reached the sideboard when the stout man patted the girl’s cheek, and to seize a huckleberry pie was with him the work of a moment. The next instant the pie had whizzed past the other’s head and burst like a shell against the wall.
There are, no doubt, restaurants where this sort of thing would have excited little comment, but the Cosmopolis was not one of them. Everybody had something to say, but the only one among those present who had anything sensible to say was the child in the sailor suit.
“Do it again!” said the child, cordially.
The Sausage Chappie did it again. He took up a fruit salad, poised it for a moment, then decanted it over Mr. Gossett’s bald head. The child’s happy laughter rang over the restaurant. Whatever anybody else might think of the affair, this child liked it and was prepared to go on record to that effect.
Epic events have a stunning quality. They paralyse the faculties. For a moment there was a pause. The world stood still. Mr. Brewster bubbled inarticulately. Mr. Gossett dried himself sketchily with a napkin. The Sausage Chappie snorted.
The girl had risen to her feet and was staring wildly.
“John!” she cried.
Even at this moment of crisis the Sausage Chappie was able to look relieved.
“So it is!” he said. “And I thought it was Lancelot!”
“I thought you were dead!”
“I’m not!” said the Sausage Chappie.
Mr. Gossett, speaking thickly through the fruit-salad, was understood to say that he regretted this. And then confusion broke loose again. Everybody began to talk at once.
“I say!” said Archie. “I say! One moment!”
Of the first stages of this interesting episode Archie had been a paralysed spectator. The thing had numbed him. And then–
Sudden a thought came, like a full-blown rose. Flushing his brow.
When he reached the gesticulating group, he was calm and business- like. He had a constructive policy to suggest.
“I say,” he said. “I’ve got an idea!”
“Go away!” said Mr. Brewster. “This is bad enough without you butting in.”
Archie quelled him with a gesture.
“Leave us,” he said. “We would be alone. I want to have a little business-talk with Mr. Gossett.” He turned to the movie-magnate, who was gradually emerging from the fruit-salad rather after the manner of a stout Venus rising from the sea. “Can you spare me a moment of your valuable time?”
“I’ll have him arrested!”
“Don’t you do it, laddie. Listen!”
“The man’s mad. Throwing pies!”
Archie attached himself to his coat-button.
“Be calm, laddie. Calm and reasonable!”
For the first time Mr. Gossett seemed to become aware that what he had been looking on as a vague annoyance was really an individual.