Chapter 49
Helen looked at him in silence, not wondering what he might be going to do with his week-end instead, because she already guessed.
Before she said anything more his father came in; and a moment later dinner was announced.
Jim slept soundly for the first night in a long time. His mother scarcely closed her eyes at all.
CHAPTER XIV
There had been a row at the Red Flag Club--a matter of differing opinions between members--nothing sufficient to attract the police, but enough to break several heads, benches and windows. And it was evident that some gentleman's damaged nose had bled all over the linoleum in the lobby.
Elmer Skidder, arriving at the studio next morning in his brand new limousine, heard about the s.h.i.+ndy and went into the club to inspect the wreckage. Then, mad all through, he started out to find Puma. But a Sister Art had got the best of Angelo Puma in a questionable cabaret the night before, and he had not yet arrived at the studio of the Super-Picture Corporation.
Skidder, thrifty by every instinct, and now smarting under his wrongs at the hands--and feet--of the Red Flag Club, went away in his gorgeous limousine to find Sondheim, who paid the rental and who lived in the Bronx.
It was a long way; every mile and every gallon of gasoline made Skidder madder; and when at length he arrived at the brand new, jerry-built apartment house inhabited by Max Sondheim, he had concluded that the Red Flag Club was an undesirable tenant and that it must be summarily kicked out.
Sondheim was still in bed, but a short-haired and pallid young woman, with a.s.sorted spots on her complexion, bade Skidder enter, and opened the chamber door for him.
The bedroom, which smelled of sour fish, was very cold, very dirty, and very blue with cigar smoke. The remains of a delicatessen breakfast stood on a table near the only window, which was tightly shut, and under the sill of which a radiator emitted explosive symptoms of steam to come.
Sondheim sprawled under the bed-covers, smoking; two other men sat on the edge of the bed--Karl Kastner and Nathan Bromberg. Both were smoking porcelain pipes. Three slopping quarts of beer decorated the wash stand.
Skidder, who had halted in the doorway as the full aroma of the place smote him, now entered at the curt suggestion of Sondheim, but refused a chair.
"Say, Sondheim," he began, "I been to the club this morning, and I've seen what you've done to the place."
"Well?" demanded Sondheim, in a growling voice, "what haf we done?"
"Oh, nothing;--smashed the furniture f'r instance. That's all. But it don't go with me. See?"
Kastner got up and gave him a sinister, near-sighted look: "If ve done damach ve
"Sure you'll pay!" bl.u.s.tered Skidder. "And that's all right, too. But no more for yours truly. I'm through. Here's where your bunch quits the hall for keeps. Get me?"
"Please?" inquired Kastner, turning a brick red.
"I say I'm through!" bl.u.s.tered Skidder. "You gotta get other quarters.
It don't pay us to keep on buying benches and mending windows, even if you cough up for 'em. It don't pay us to rent the hall to your club and get all this here notoriety, what with your red flags and the _po_-lice hanging around and nosin' into everything----"
"Ach wa.s.s!" snapped Kastner, "of vat are you speaking? Iss it for you to concern yourself mit our club und vat iss it ve do?"
"Say, who d'yeh think you're talkin' to?" retorted Skidder, his eyes snapping furiously. "Grab this from me, old scout?--I'm half owner of that hall and I'm telling you to get out! Is that plain?"
"So?" Kastner sneered at him and nudged Sondheim, who immediately sat up in bed and levelled an unwashed hand at Skidder.
"You think you fire us?" he shouted, his eyes inflamed and his dirty fingers crisping to a talon. "You go home and tell Puma what you say to us. Then you learn something maybe, what you don't know already!"
"I'll learn _you_ something!" retorted Skidder. "Just wait till I show Puma the wreckage----"
"Let him look at it and be d.a.m.ned!" roared Bromberg. "Go home and show it to him! And see if he talks about firing us!"
"Say," demanded Skidder, astonished, "do you fellows think you got any drag with Angy Puma?"
"Go back and ask him!" growled Bromberg. "And don't try to come around here and get fresh again. Listen! You go buy what benches you say we broke and send the bill to me, and keep your mouth shut and mind your fool business!"
"I'll mind my own and yours too!" screamed Skidder, seized by an ungovernable access of fury. "Say, you poor nut!--you sick mink!--you stale hunk of cheese!--if you come down my way again I'll kick your s.h.i.+rttail for you! Get that?" And he slammed the door and strode out in a flaming rage.
But when, still furiously excited, he arrived once more at the office,--and when Puma, who had just entered, had listened in sullen consternation to his story, he received another amazing and most unpleasant shock. For Puma told him flatly that the tenancy of the Red Flag Club suited him; that no lease could be broken, except by mutual consent of partners; and that he, Skidder, had had no business to go to Sondheim with any such threat of eviction unless he had first consulted his partner's wishes.
"Well, what--what--" stammered Skidder--"what the h.e.l.l drag have those guys got with you?"
"Why is it you talk foolish?" retorted Puma sharply. "Drag? Did Sondheim say----"
"No! _I_ say it. I ask you what have those crazy nuts got on you that you stand for all this rumpus?"
Puma's l.u.s.trous eyes, battered but still magnificent, fixed themselves on Skidder.
"Go out," he said briefly to his stenographer. Then, when the girl had gone, and the gla.s.s door closed behind her, he turned heavily and gazed at Skidder some more. And, after a few moments' silence: "Go on," he said. "What did Sondheim say about me?"
Skidder's small, s.h.i.+fty eyes were blinking furiously and his essentially suspicious mind was also operating at full speed. When he had calculated what to say he took the chance, and said:
"Sondheim gave me to understand that he's got such a h.e.l.l of a pull with you that I can't kick him out of my property. What do you know about that, Angelo?"
"Go on," said Puma impatiently, "what else did he say about me?"
"Ain't I telling you?"
"Tell more."
Skidder had no more to tell, so he manufactured more.
"Well," he continued craftily, "I didn't exactly get what that kike said." But his grin and his manner gave his words the lie, as he intended they should. "Something about your being in dutch--" He checked himself as Puma's black eyes lighted with a momentary glare.
"What? He tells you I am in with Germans!"
"Naw;--in dutch!"
Puma's sanguinary skin reddened; his puffy fingers fished for a cigar in the pocket of his fancy waistcoat; he found one and lighted it, not looking at his partner. Then he picked up the morning paper.
Skidder shrugged; stood up, pretending to yawn; started to open the door.
"Elmer?"