The Day of Days | Page 4

gloomily over his shoulder, and in sepulchral accents uttered the one word:
"Shoot!"
"How would you like to go to the theatre to-night?"
George soaped noisily his huge red hands.
"I'd like it so hard," he replied, "that I'm already dated up for an evenin' of intellect'al enjoyment. Me and Sammy Holt 'a goin' round to Miner's Eight' Avenoo and bust up the show. You can trail if you wanta, but don't blame me if some big, coarse, two-fisted guy hears me call you Perceval and picks on you."
He bent forward over the bowl, and the cubicle echoed with sounds of splashing broken by gasps, splutters, and gurgles, until he straightened up, groped blindly for two yards or so of dark grey roller-towel ornamenting the adjacent wall, buried his face in its hospitable obscurity, and presently emerged to daylight with a countenance bright and shining above his chin, below his eyebrows, and in front of his ears.
"How's that?" he demanded explosively. "Come off all right--didn't it?"
P. Sybarite inclined his head to one side and regarded the outcome of a reform administration.
"You look almost naked around the nose," he remarked at length. "But you'll do. Don't worry.... When I asked if you'd like to go to the theatre to-night, I meant it--and I meant a regular show, at a Broadway house."
"Quit your kiddin'," countered Mr. Bross indulgently. "Come along: I got an engagement to walk home and save a nickel, and so've you."
"Wait a minute," insisted P. Sybarite, without moving. "I'm in earnest about this. I offer you a seat in a stage-box at the Knickerbocker Theatre to-night, to see Otis Skinner in 'Kismet.'"
George's eyes opened simultaneously with his mouth.
"Me?" he gasped. "Alone?"
P. Sybarite shook his head. "One of a party of four."
"Who else?" George demanded with pardonable caution.
"Miss Prim, Miss Leasing, myself."
Removing his apron of ticking, the shipping clerk opened a drawer in his desk, took put a pair of cuffs, and begun to adjust them to the wristbands of his shirt.
"Since when did you begin to snuff coke?" he enquired with mild compassion.
"I'm not joking." P. Sybarite displayed the tickets. "A friend sent me these. I'll make up the party for to-night as I said, and let you come along--on one condition."
"Go to it."
"You must promise me to quit calling me Perceval, here or any place else, to-day and forever!"
George chuckled; paused; frowned; regarded P. Sybarite with narrow suspicion.
"And never tell anybody, either," added the other, in deadly earnest.
George hesitated.
"Well, it's your _name_, ain't it?" he grumbled.
"That's not my fault. I'll be damned if I'll be called Perceval."
"And what if I keep on?"
"Then I'll make up my theatre party without you--and break your neck into the bargain," said P. Sybarite intensely.
"You?" George laughed derisively. "You break my neck? Can the comedy, beau. Why, I could eat you alive, Perceval."
P. Sybarite got down from his stool. His face was almost colourless, but for two bright red spots, the size of quarters, beneath either cheek-bone. He was half a head shorter than the shipping clerk, and apparently about half as wide; but there was sincerity in his manner and an ominous snap in the unflinching stare of his blue eyes.
"Please yourself," he said quietly. "Only--don't say I didn't warn you!"
"Ah-h!" sneered George, truculent in his amazement. "What's eatin' you?"
"We're going to settle this question before you leave this warehouse. I won't be called Perceval by you or any other pink-eared cross between Balaam's ass and a laughing hyena."
Mr. Bross gaped with resentment, which gradually overcame his better judgment.
"You won't, eh?" he said stridently. "I'd like to know what you're going to do to stop me, Perce--"
P. Sybarite stepped quickly toward him and George, with a growl, threw out his hands in a manner based upon a somewhat hazy conception of the formul? of self-defence. To his surprise, the open hand of the smaller man slipped swiftly past what he called his "guard" and placed a smart, stinging slap upon lips open to utter the syllable "val."
Bearing with indignation, he swung his right fist heavily for the head of P. Sybarite. Somehow, strangely, it missed its goal and ...
George Bross sat upon the dusty, grimy floor, batted his eyes, ruefully rubbed the back of his head, and marvelled at the reverberations inside it.
Then he became conscious of P. Sybarite some three feet distant, regarding him with tight-lipped interest.
"Good God!" George ejaculated with feeling. "Did you do that to me?"
"I did," returned P. Sybarite curtly. "Want me to prove it?"
"Plenty, thanks," returned the shipping clerk morosely, as he picked himself up and dusted off his clothing. "Gee! You got a wallop like the kick of a mule, Per--"
"Cut that!"
"P.S., I mean," George amended hastily. "Why didn't you ever tell me you was Jeffries's sparrin' partner?"
"I'm not and never was, and furthermore I didn't hit you," replied P.