So intent, indeed, had he been on his contemplation of this white cheek, faintly shot through with its shell-pink, that the door had opened and a third person had stepped into the studio without his being conscious of the fact. And it was the voice of this intruder, more than Teddie’s sudden recoil of startled wonder, that promptly brought the Commodore to attention.
“So he’s doin’ it too!” called out Gunboat Dorgan, with a quaver of incredulity in his Celtic young voice. Whereupon he threw down his hat and advanced slowly toward the table-end. “Say it quick,” he commanded. “D’ yuh want me to knock his block off?”
“No, no,” cried Teddie, already on her feet. “There’s been too much of that already!”
“But I saw the old bird tryin’ to kiss yuh!” proclaimed the indignant youth.
“Who is this young jackanapes?” interrupted the older man, in no way intimidated by the interloper with the cauliflower ear.
“Didn’t I see this old mutt pullin’ that muggin’-stuff?” persisted Gunboat, ignoring the stately old gentleman with the rose-bud in his lapel. But Teddie was herself by this time and she fixed her champion from the East Side with a cold and steely stare.
“I want to talk to you!” she said, with great deliberation. And she made that announcement with such an unlooked-for note of masterfulness that, unimpressed as it left the newcomer, it rather bewildered the old Commodore.
“And I guess I gotta earful or two to unload to yuh!” countered Gunboat, betraying that he was laboring under an excitement which more recent events had only temporarily eclipsed.
“I should be obliged to know just who this young bounder is,” repeated the older man, in his most authoritative quarter-deck manner. But that manner was entirely lost on Gunboat Dorgan.
“Yuh just play dead, yuh old Has-Been, until I say a word or two to me lady-friend here,” he proclaimed as he confronted Teddie and gave his back to an all too negligible enemy. “I came here to find out what right a law-sharp named West has got to take that car of yours away from me. I wantta know what call he’s got to load Ruby up wit’ a lot o’ talk about me goin’ to State’s Prison. And I may be a prize-fighter, but I’ve got the right to ask if I ain’t lived decent and done my work on the square. I’ve got——”