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Page 58
The waiter favoured him with a hard stare. "Red November's business
ain't none'r mine," he growled; "an' less you know him a heluva sight
better'n I do, you'd better take a straight tip from me
and--_leave--it--lay_!"
"Oh!" said the little man hastily--"I was only wondering.... But I
wish you would slip Red the high sign: all I want is one word with
him."
"All right, bo'--you're on."
Slouching off, obviously reluctant to interrupt the diversions of Mr.
November, the man at length mustered up courage to touch that
gentleman's elbow. The gangster turned sharply, a frown replacing the
smile which had illuminated his attempts to overcome the boy's
recently developed aversion to drink. The waiter murmured in his
private ear.
Promptly P. Sybarite received a sharp look from eyes as black and hard
as shoe buttons; and with equanimity endured it--even went to the
length of a nod accompanied by his quaint, ingratiating smile. A
courtesy ignored completely: the dark eyes veered back to the waiter's
face and the white teeth flashed as he was curtly dismissed.
He shuffled back, scowling, reported sulkily: "Says yuh gotta wait";
and turned away in answer to a summons from another table.
Unruffled, P. Sybarite sipped his beer--sipped it sparingly and not
without misgivings, but sedulously to keep in character as a familiar
of the dive.
Presently there came yet another lull in the clatter of tongues; and
again the accents of the boy sounded distinctly from the gangster's
table:
"I won't--that's flat! I refuse positively--go up stairs--sleep it
off. I'm a' right--give you m' word--in the _head_. All my
trouble's--these mutinous dogs of legs. But I'll make 'em mind, yet.
Trust me--"
And again the babel blotted out his utterance.
But P. Sybarite had experienced a sudden rush of intelligence to the
head--was in the throes of that mental process which it is our habit
wittily to distinguish by the expressive term, "putting two and two
together."
Could this, by any chance, be "that boy" who, Mr. Brian Shaynon had
been assured, wouldn't know where he'd been when he waked? Was an
attempt to ensure that desired consummation through the agency of a
drug, being made in the open restaurant?
If not, why was Red November neglecting all other affairs to press
drink upon a man who knew when he had enough?
If so, what might be the nature of the link connecting the boy with
the "job," to be on which at half-past two November had just now
covenanted with Brian Shaynon?
What incriminating knowledge could this boy possess, to render old
Shaynon, willing that his memory should be expurgated by such a
mind- and nerve-shattering agent as the knock-out drop of White Light
commerce?
Now Shaynon was capable of almost any degree of infamy, if not,
perhaps, the absolute peer of Red November.
This strange development of that night of Destiny began to assume in
P. Sybarite's esteem a complexion of baleful promise.
But the more keenly interested he grew, the more indifferent he made
himself appear, slouching low and lower in his chair, his eyes
listless and half closed--his look one of the most pronounced apathy:
the while he conned the circumstances, physical as well as psychical,
with the narrowest attention. Certainly, it would seem, a man who had
enough instinctive decency to wish to escape the degradation of deeper
drunkenness, should be humoured rather than opposed....
The table on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall,
the young man sitting in the corner between November and the woman. Of
two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other
occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates of the dive and
creatures of November's--or their looks libelled them shamefully.
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