With a newborn boldness Tidbury Epps thrust open the door and entered.
No shower of confetti, no popping of corks, no rousing stein song
greeted him. Save for the industrious piano the place seemed empty.
However, by the feeble beams that came from the lights, bandaged in
batik like so many sore thumbs, he discerned a mountainous matron behind
a cash register, engaged in tatting.
"Where's everybody?" he asked of her.
"Oh, things will liven up after a bit," she yawned.
Tidbury sat at a small bright blue table and scanned a card affixed to
the wall.
Angel's Ambrosia ........ $0.50
Horse's Neck ............ .60
Devil's Delight ......... .70
Dry Martini ............. .50
Very dry Martini ........ .60
Very, very dry Martini .. .90
Champagne Sizzle ........ .75
A sleepy waiter with a soup-stained vest came from the inner room
presently.
"Gimme a Devil's Delight," ordered Tidbury Epps recklessly.
He had heard that Greenwich Village, the untrammeled, laughs openly in
the teeth of the Eighteenth Amendment. He had never in his life tasted
an alcoholic drink, but to-night he was stopping at nothing. The Devil's
Delight came, and Tidbury as he sipped its pink saccharinity found
himself feeling that the devil is rather easily delighted. He had
expected the potion to make his head buzz; but it did not. Instead it
distinctly suggested rather weak and not very superior strawberry sirup
and carbonated water. He crooked a summoning finger at the waiter.
"Horse's Neck," he commanded.
The Horse's Neck made its appearance, an insipid-looking amber fluid
with a wan piece of lemon peel floating shamefacedly on its surface.
"Tastes just like ginger ale to me," remarked Mr. Epps. "Wadjuh expeck
in a Horse's Neck?" queried the waiter bellicosely. "Chloride of lime?"
"I can't feel it at all," complained Mr. Epps.
"Feel it?" The waiter raised his brows. "Say, what do you think this
joint is? A dump? We ain't bootleggers, mister."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Epps.
He was about to go elsewhere, when a babel of excited voices outside the
door made him sink back into his chair; evidently the promise of the
tatting matron was to be made good, and Ye Amiable Oyster was about to
liven up.
The first thing that entered the door was an animal--a full-size, shaggy
anthropoid ape, big as a man. Mr. Epps was too alarmed to bolt. But as
the creature careened into the light Mr. Epps observed that his face was
human and slightly Hibernian. Behind him came a girl, rather sketchily
dressed for autumn in a pair of bead portieres, a girdle or two, and a
gilt plaster bird, which was bound firmly to her head. Mr. Epps had seen
things like her on cigarette boxes. A second couple followed, hilarious.
The man wore a tight velvet suit, a sombrero several yards around, black
mustaches of prodigious length and bristle that did not match the red of
his hair, and earrings the size of cantaloupes; it was not clear whether
he was intended to be a pirate or an organ grinder or a compromise
between the two; but it was clear that he was in a state where it did
not matter, to him, in the least. His companion wore a precarious
garment of dry grass, and her arms were stained brown; at intervals she
conveyed the information to the general atmosphere that she was a bimbo
from a bamboo isle.
The four, after an impromptu ring-around-a-rosie, collapsed into chairs
near the wide-eyed Epps. Fascinated he stared at them--the first
authentic natives of Greenwich Village on whom his cloistered eye had
ever rested.
"Ginger ale," bawled the ape.
It was brought. The ape dipping into a fold in his anatomy brought to
light a capacious flask, kissed it solemnly, and poured its contents
into the glasses of the others.
"Jake, that sure is the real old stuff," said the girl in the grass
dress.
"Made it m'sef," said the ape proudly. "Y'see, I took dozen apricots,
and ten pounds sugar, and some yeast and some raisins, and mixed 'em in
a jug, and added water and----"
"That's nine times we heard all about that," interrupted the pirate or
organ grinder. "Better be careful, anyhow. Mebbe that guy is a revnoo
officer."
They all turned to stare at Mr. Epps.
"Of course he ain't 'nofficer, Ed," protested the ape, surveying Tidbury
with care. "He's got too kind a face. You ain't 'nofficer, are you?"
"No," said Tidbury.
"What did I tell yuh?" cried the ape, triumphantly, to his companions.
"Shove up your chair, old sport, and have a drink with us. You look like
a live one. I like your face."
Thus bidden, Tidbury, with an air of abandon, joined the group. The ape
named Jake tilted his flask over Tidbury's spiritless Horse's Neck with
such vehement good-fellowship that a gush of pungent brown fluid spurted
from the container. Tidbury downed the mixture at a gulp; it made tears
start to his eyes and a conflagration flame up in his brain.
"Howzit?" demanded Jake the ape.
"'Sgoo'," answered Tidbury warmly.
"Have 'nuther. Got plenty," said Jake, producing a second flask from
another recess in his shaggy skin. "I like your face."
"Don't care if I do," said Tidbury nonchalantly.
The lights in the near-cafe were very bright, the voices very high, the
conversation exquisitely witty, the mechanical piano a symphonic
rhapsody, and the heart of Tidbury Epps was pumping with wild, unwonted
pumps; he smiled to himself. He was going to the devil at a great rate.
He waxed loquacious. He told them anecdotes; he even sang a little.
He beamed upon Jake, and playfully plucked a tuft of hair from his
costume.
"Nice li'l' monkey," he said affably.
"Not a monkey!" denied Jake indignantly.
"Wad are you? S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e?"
"Nope. Not a S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e."
"Ran-tan?"
"Nope. Not a ran-tan."
"Bamboo?"
"Nope. Not a bamboo."
"Well, wad are you?"
Jake thumped his hairy chest proudly.
"I'm a griller," he explained.
"Oh," said Mr. Epps, satisfied. "A griller. Of course! Is it hard work?"
"Work?" cried Jake. "Say, this ain't my real skin. It's a 'sguise."
"Oh," said Mr. Epps. "So you're 'sguised? Wad did you do?"
"Careful, Jake," the organ grinder or pirate warned. "He may be a revnoo
officer."
The gorilla turned on him angrily.
"Lookahere, Ed Peterson, how dare you pass remarks like that about my
ole friend, Mr. ---- What is your name, anyhow? Of course he ain't no
revnofficer? Are you?"
"I'll fight anybody who says I am," declared Tidbury Epps, glaring
fiercely around at the empty chairs and tables.
"You a fighter?" inquired the gorilla, in a voice in which awe,
admiration and alcohol mingled.
Mr. Epps contracted his brow and narrowed his eyes.
"Yep," he said impressively. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps. I'd rather
fight than eat." He turned sternly to the gorilla. "Why are you
'sguised? Wad did you do?"
"Why, you poor nut," put in the girl in the beads, "we're going to the
Pagan Rout."
"Sure, that's it," chimed in Jake. "Goin' to the Pagan Row. Come on
along, Terrible."
"Aw, I'm tired of Pagan Routs," said Mr. Epps loftily. But the
suggestion speeded up the pumpings of his heart.
"Oh, do come!" urged the girl in the beads.
"Ain't got no 'sguise," said Mr. Epps. He was wavering.
"Aw, come on!" cried the gorilla, clapping him on the shoulder till his
teeth rattled. "Proud to have you with us, Terrible. I know a live one
when I see one. Come on along. You'll see a lot of your friends there."
His friends? Tidbury thought of Martha.
"If I only had a 'sguise----" he began.
"You can get one round at Steinbock's, on Seventh Avenue," promptly
informed the organ grinder-pirate. "That is," he added with sudden
suspicion, "if you ain't one of these here revnofficers."
"S-s-s-s-sh, Ed," cautioned Jake, the gorilla. "Do you want Terrible
Battling Epps to take a poke at you?"
Tidbury had made up his mind.
"I'll go," he announced.
"Good!" exclaimed the gorilla delightedly. "Atta boy! Glad to have a
real N'Yawk sport with us. Meet you at Webber Hall, Terrible."
"Webber Hall? Wherezat?" inquired Tidbury as he sought to negotiate the
door.
"Well," confessed the gorilla, "I dunno 'zactly m'sef. Y'see, I'm from
Kansas City m'sef. In the lid game, I am. Biggest firm west of the
Mizzizippi. Last year we sold----"
"Aw, stop selling and tell Terrible how to get to Webber Hall," put in
the girl in the beads; she appeared to be the gorilla's wife.
"Well," said Jake, thoughtfully rubbing his fuzzy head, "far as I
remember, you go out to the square and you go straight along till you
get to the L and you turn to the right----"
"Left!" interjected the organ grinder-pirate.
"Right," repeated the gorilla firmly. "And then you turn down another
street--no, you don't--you go straight on till you see a dentist's sign,
a big gold tooth, with 'Gee, it didn't hurt a bit at Dr. B. Schmuck's
Parlors,' painted on it, and you turn to your right----"
"Left," corrected the pirate-organ grinder sternly.
"Waz difference?" went on the gorilla blandly. "Well, as I was saying,
you turn to the right or left and then you go along three or four
blocks, and then you turn to your left----"
"Right, I tell you!" roared the man in velvet.
"Oh, well, you go along until you come to a corner and you turn it and
go down a little bit, and there you are!"
"Where am I?" Mr. Epps, posing against the door, asked.
"Webber Hall," said Jake. "Pagan Row."
"Oh," said Mr. Epps.
"Didn't you follow me?"
"Of course I followed you."
"Good. See you at the party, Terrible. You're hot stuff."
"I'll be there. G'night."
"G'night, Terrible, old scout."