“The more you give ’em the more they want!” he complained. “There’s no pleasing ’em! It isn’t only in my business. There’s your father, Mrs. Moffam!”
“Good God! Where?” said Archie, starting.
“I say, take your father’s case. He’s doing all he knows to get this new hotel of his finished, and what happens? A man gets fired for loafing on his job, and Connolly calls a strike. And the building operations are held up till the thing’s settled! It isn’t right!”
“It’s a great shame,” agreed Lucille. “I was reading about it in the paper this morning.”
“That man Connolly’s a tough guy. You’d think, being a personal friend of your father, he would–”
“I didn’t know they were friends.”
“Been friends for years. But a lot of difference that makes. Out come the men just the same. It isn’t right! I was saying it wasn’t right!” repeated Mr. Blumenthal to Archie, for he was a man who liked the attention of every member of his audience.
Archie did not reply. He was staring glassily across the room at two men who had just come in. One was a large, stout, square-faced man of commanding personality. The other was Mr. Daniel Brewster.
Mr. Blumenthal followed his gaze.
“Why, there is Connolly coming in now!”
“Father!” gasped Lucille.
Her eyes met Archie’s. Archie took a hasty drink of ice-water.
“This,” he murmured, “has torn it!”
“Archie, you must do something!”
“I know! But what?”
“What’s the trouble?” enquired Mr. Blumenthal, mystified.
“Go over to their table and talk to them,” said Lucille.
“Me!” Archie quivered. “No, I say, old thing, really!”
“Get them away!”
“How do you mean?”
“I know!” cried Lucille, inspired, “Father promised that you should be manager of the new hotel when it was built. Well, then, this strike affects you just as much as anybody else. You have a perfect right to talk it over with them. Go and ask them to have dinner up in our suite where you can discuss it quietly. Say that up there they won’t be disturbed by the–the music.”
At this moment, while Archie wavered, hesitating like a diver on the edge of a spring-board who is trying to summon up the necessary nerve to project himself into the deep, a bell-boy approached the table where the Messrs. Brewster and Connolly had seated themselves. He murmured something in Mr. Brewster’s ear, and the proprietor of the Cosmopolis rose and followed him out of the room.
“Quick! Now’s your chance!” said Lucille, eagerly. “Father’s been called to the telephone. Hurry!”
Archie took another drink of ice-water to steady his shaking nerve- centers, pulled down his waistcoat, straightened his tie, and then, with something of the air of a Roman gladiator entering the arena, tottered across the room. Lucille turned to entertain the perplexed music-publisher.
The nearer Archie got to Mr. Aloysius Connolly the less did he like the looks of him. Even at a distance the Labour leader had had a formidable aspect. Seen close to, he looked even more uninviting. His face had the appearance of having been carved out of granite, and the eye which collided with Archie’s as the latter, with an attempt at an ingratiating smile, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table was hard and frosty. Mr. Connolly gave the impression that he would be a good man to have on your side during a rough-and- tumble fight down on the water-front or in some lumber-camp, but he did not look chummy.
“Hallo-allo-allo!” said Archie.
“Who the devil,” inquired Mr. Connolly, “are you?”
“My name’s Archibald Moffam.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“I’m jolly old Brewster’s son-in-law.”
“Glad to meet yon.”
“Glad to meet YOU,” said Archie, handsomely.
“Well, good-bye!” said Mr. Connolly.
“Eh?”
“Run along and sell your papers. Your father-in-law and I have business to discuss.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Private,” added Mr. Connolly.
“Oh, but I’m in on this binge, you know. I’m going to be the manager of the new hotel.”
“You!”
“Absolutely!”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Connolly, noncommittally.
Archie, pleased with the smoothness with which matters had opened, bent forward winsomely.
“I say, you know! It won’t do, you know! Absolutely no! Not a bit like it! No, no, far from it! Well, how about it? How do we go? What? Yes? No?”