Ned Beaumont grinned. “No, you’re not drunk.”
“The hell I’m not drunk. I’m drunker than you are. I’m drunker than anybody in this dump. i’m drunk as hell and don’t think I’m not, but–” He held up a thick unclean forefinger.
A waiter came in the doorway asking: “What is it, gents?”
Jeff turned to confront him. “Where’ve you been? Sleeping? I rung for you one hour ago.”
The waiter began to say something.
Jeff said: “I bring the best friend I got in the world up here for a drink and what the hell happens? We have to sit around a whole Goddamned hour waiting for a lousy waiter. No wonder he’s sore at me.”
“What do you want?” the waiter asked indifferently.
“I want to know where in hell the girl that was in here went to.”
“Oh, her? She’s gone.”
“Cone where?”
“I don’t know.”
Jeff scowled. “Well, you find out, and God-damned quick. What’s the idea of not knowing where she went? If this ain’t a swell joint where nobody–” A shrewd light came into his red eyes. “I’ll tell you what to do. You go up to the ladies’ toilet and see if she’s there.”
“She ain’t there,” the waiter said. “She went out.”
“The dirty bastard!” Jeff said and turned to Ned Beaumont. “What’d you do to a dirty bastard like that? I bring you up here because I want you to meet her because I know you’ll like her and she’ll like you and she’s too God-damned snotty to meet my friends and out she goes.”
Ned Beaumont was lighting a cigar. He did not say anything.
Jeff scratched his head, growled, “Well, bring us something to drink, then,” sat down across the table from Ned Beaumont, and said savagely: “Mine’s rye.”
Ned Beaumont said: “Scotch.”
The waiter went away.
Jeff glared at Ned Beaumont. “Don’t get the idea that I don’t know what you’re up to, either,” he said angrily.
“I’m not up to anything,” Ned Beaumont replied carelessly. “I’d like to see Shad and I thought maybe I’d find Whisky Vassos here and he’d send me to Shad.”
“Don’t you think I know where Shad is?”
“You ought to.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me?”
“All right. Where is he?”
Jeff slapped the table mightily with an open hand and bawled: “You’re a liar. You don’t give a God-damn where Shad is. It’s me you’re after.”
Ned Beaumont smiled and shook his head.
“It is,” the apish man insisted. “You know God-damned well that–”
A young-middle-aged man with plump red lips and round eyes came to the door. He said: “Cut it out, Jeff. You’re making more noise than everybody else in the place.”
Jeff screwed himself around in his chair. “It’s this bastard,” he told the man in the doorway, indicating Ned Beaumont with a jerk of his thumb. “He thinks I don’t know what he’s up to. I know what he’s up to. He’s a heel and that’s what he is. And I’m going to beat hell out of him and that’s what I’m going to do.”
The man in the doorway said reasonably, “Well, you don’t have to make so much noise about it,” winked at Ned Beaumont, and went away.
Jeff said gloomily: “Tim’s turning into a heel too.” He spit on the floor.
The waiter came in with their drinks.
Ned Beaumont raised his glass, said, “Looking at you,” and drank.
Jeff said: “I don’t want to look at you. You’re a heel.” He stared somberly at Ned Beaumont.
“You’re crazy.”
“You’re a liar. I’m drunk. But I ain’t so drunk that I don’t know what you’re up to.” He emptied his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “And I say you’re a heel.”
Ned Beaumont, smiling amiably, said: “All right. Have it your way.”
Jeff thrust his apish muzzle forward a little. “You think you’re smart as hell, don’t you?”
Ned Beaumont did not say anything.
“You think it’s a damned smart trick coming in here and trying to get me plastered so you can turn me up.”
“That’s right,” Ned Beaumont said carelessly, “there is a murder-charge against you for bumping off Francis West, isn’t there?”