"Kiddo," he said, and he spoke with an oily suavity not at all to my liking, "I kind o' thought I smelt gas leakin' in here."
He had the effrontery to turn and stare about at the four walls of the room. Then he moved easily across the floor to where the champagne picture hung. What he saw, or did not see there, I had no means of determining. For to turn and look after him would be to betray my part.
"That leak ain't in this room," admitted the second of the trio, a swarthy and loose-lipped land pirate with a sweep of carroty bang which covered his left eyebrow. I knew, even before he spoke, that he was the man called Redney, just as I knew the first speaker was the youth they had addressed as Tony. About the third man, who towered above the other two in his giant-like stature, there was a sense of calm and solidity that seemed almost pachydermatous. Yet this same solidity in some way warned me that he might be the most dangerous of them all.
"'Sssh all righ'!" I loosely condoned, with a sleepy lurch of the body. How much my acting was convincing to them was a matter of vast concern to me. The man named Tony, who had continued to study the wooden partition against which my microphone had hung, turned back to the table and calmly seated himself beside me. My heart went down like an elevator with a broken cable when I noticed the nervous sweat which had come out on his forehead.
"Say, Sister, this puts the drinks on us," he declared, with an airiness which I felt to be as unreal as my own inebriacy. I saw him motion for the other two to seat themselves.
They did so, a little mystified, each man keeping his eyes fixed on the youth called Tony. The latter laughed, for no reason that I could understand, and over his shoulder bawled out the one word, "Shimmey!"
Shimmey, I remembered, was my friend the wall-eyed waiter. And this waiter it was who stepped trailingly into the room.
"Shimmey," said the voluble youth at my side. "We introoded on this gen'lmun. And we got to square ourselves. So what's it goin' to be?"
"Nothin'!" I protested, with a repugnant wave of the hand.
"You mean we ain't good enough for you to drink with?" demanded the youth called Tony. I could see what he wanted. I could feel what was coming. He was looking for some reason, however tenuous, to start trouble. Without fail he would find it in time. But my one desire was to defer that outcome as long as possible. So I grinned back at him, rather idiotically, I'm afraid.