Leaning against the bar were Cooley and the man whom Mellin had seen lolling beside Madame de Vaurigard in Cooley's automobile in Paris, the same gross person for whom he had instantly conceived a strong repugnance, a feeling not at once altered by a closer view.
Cooley greeted Mellin uproariously and Mr. Sneyd introduced the fat man. “Mr. Mellin, the Honorable Chandler Pedlow,” he said; nor was the shock to the first-named gentleman lessened by young Cooley's adding, “Best feller in the world!”
Mr. Pedlow's eyes were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small though they were, they were not shifty, for they met Mellin's with a squareness that was almost brutal. He offered a fat paw, wet by a full glass which he set down too suddenly on the bar.
“Shake,” he said, in a loud and husky voice, “and be friends! Tommy,” he added to the attendant, “another round of Martinis.”
“Not for me,” said Mellin hastily. “I don't often—”
“What!” Mr. Pedlow roared suddenly. “Why, the first words Countess de Vaurigard says to me this afternoon was, 'I want you to meet my young friend Mellin,' she says; 'the gamest little Indian that ever come down the pike! He's game,' she says—'he'll see you all under the table!' That's what the smartest little woman in the world, the Countess de Vaurigard, says about you.”
This did not seem very closely to echo Madame de Vaurigard's habit of phrasing, but Mellin perceived that it might be only the fat man's way of putting things.
“You ain't goin' back on her, are you?” continued Mr. Pedlow. “You ain't goin' to make her out a liar? I tell you, when the Countess de Vaurigard says a man 's game, he is game!” He laid his big paw cordially on Mellin's shoulder and smiled, lowering his voice to a friendly whisper. “And I'll bet ten thousand dollars right out of my pants pocket you are game, too!”
He pressed a glass into the other's hand. Smiling feebly, the embarrassed Mellin accepted it.
“Make it four more, Tommy,” said Pedlow. “And here,” continued this thoughtful man, “I don't go bandying no ladies' names around a bar-room—that ain't my style—but I do want to propose a toast. I won't name her, but you all know who I mean.”