Black Pete laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder in a perfectly friendly like manner and said:
“You and Jeem com’ heeva dreenk weeth me?”
At that Jack got up from the table and looked Black Pete square in the eye.
“I don’t drink,” he said shortly.
Black Pete was mad clear through, that much was plain.
Bill who had been taking a hand in a world-old game called poker, happened to see Jack and Black Pete facing each other and he divined trouble. He laid down his cards and went over where his pardner and the bad un were, to listen in on the conversation.
“Heeve a seegar, then,” the Canuk insisted catching hold of Jack’s arm and pulling him toward the bar.
Taking a firm hold on Black Pete’s wrist Jack removed his hand from his arm and said, without the slightest inflexion in his voice, “I don’t smoke.”
Then the unexpected happened—that which had not happened in Circle in perhaps a dozen or twenty years before.
“You don’t eh?” growled Black Pete, infuriated at Jack’s cold refusal to join him in either one or the other, “then deem you, heeve a bullet!”