Chapter 56
"Look here," interrupted the other in a menacing voice, "you're getting too d.a.m.ned independent, telling me to be quick! I had a date with you here at five o'clock. You thought you wouldn't keep it and you left at four-thirty. But I stuck around till you 'phoned in that you'd stop here to get some money. It's seven o'clock now, and I've waited for you. And I guess you've got enough time to hear what I'm going to say."
Puma looked at him without any expression at all on his sanguine features. "Go on," he said.
"What I got to say to you is this," began Sondheim. "There's a kind of a club that uses our hall on off nights. It's run by women."
Puma waited.
"They meet this evening at eight in our hall,--your hall, if you choose."
Puma nodded carelessly.
"All right. Put them out."
"What?"
"Put 'em out!" growled Sondheim. "We don't want them there to-night or any other night."
"You ask me to evict respectable people who pay me rent?"
"I don't ask you; I _tell_ you."
Puma turned a deep red: "And whose hall do you think it is?" he demanded in a silky voice.
"Yours. That's why I tell you to get rid of that bunch and their Combat Club."
"Why have you ask me such a----"
"Because they're fighting us and you know it. That's a good enough reason."
"I shall not do so," said Puma, moistening his lips with his tongue.
"Oh, I guess you will when you think it over," sneered Sondheim, getting up from his chair and stuffing his newspaper into his overcoat pocket. He crossed the floor and shot an ugly glance at Puma _en pa.s.sant_. Then he jerked open the door and went out briskly.
Puma walked into the inner waiting room, where a telephone operator sat reading a book.
"Where's McCabe?" he asked.
"Here he comes now, Governor."
The office manager sauntered up, eating a slice of apple pie, and Puma stepped forward to meet him.
"For what reason have you permit
he demanded.
"He said you told him to go in and wait there."
"He is a liar! Hereafter he shall wait out here. You understand, McCabe?"
"Yes, sir. You're always out when he calls, ain't you?"
Puma meditated a few moments: "No. When he calls you shall let me know. Then I decide. But he shall not wait in my office."
"Very good, sir." And, as Puma turned to go: "The police was here again this evening, sir."
"Why?"
"They heard of the row in the hall last night."
"What did you tell them?"
"Oh, the muss was all swept up--windows fixed and the busted benches in the furnace, so I said there had been no row as far as I knew, and I let 'em go in and nose around."
"Next time," said Puma, "you shall say to them that there was a very bad riot."
"Sir?"
"A big fight," continued Puma. "And if there is only a little damage you shall make more. And you shall show it to the police."
"I get you, Governor. I'll stage it right; don't worry."
"Yes, you shall stage it like there never was in all of France any ruins like my hall! And afterward," he said, half to himself, "we shall see what we shall see."
He went back to his office, took a packet of hundred dollar bills from the safe, and walked slowly out to where the limousine awaited him.
"Say, what the h.e.l.l--" began Skidder impatiently; but Puma leaped lightly to his seat and pulled the fur robe over his knees.
"Now," he said, in excellent humour, "we pick up Mr. Pawling at the Astor."
"Where are the ladies?"
"They join us, Hotel Rajah. It will be, I trust, an amusing evening."
About midnight, dinner merged noisily into supper in the private dining room reserved by Mr. Puma for himself and guests at the new Hotel Rajah.
There had been intermittent dancing during the dinner, but now the negro jazz specialists had been dismissed with emoluments, and a music-box subst.i.tuted; and supper promised to become even a more lively repet.i.tion of the earlier banquet.
Puma was superb--a large, heavy man, he danced as lightly as any ballerina; and he and Tessa Barclay did a Paraguayan dance together, with a leisurely and agile perfection of execution that elicited uproarious demonstrations from the others.
Not a whit winded, Puma resumed his seat at table, laughing as Mr.
Pawling insisted on shaking hands with him.
"You are far too kind to my poor accomplishments," he said in deprecation. "It was not at all difficult, that Paraguayan dance."
"It was art!" insisted Mr. Pawling, his watery eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with emotion. And he pressed the pretty waist of Tessa Barclay.
"Art," rejoined Puma, laying a jewelled hand on his s.h.i.+rt-front, "is an ecstatic outburst from within, like the song of the bird. Art is simple; art is not difficult. Where effort begins, art ends. Where self-expression becomes a labour, art already has perished!"