"Get a move on, if you please," he finished, pointing his black moustache, and prodding his white teeth with a gold toothpick, as he stared at the man made notorious by today's newspapers. Pressing his lips tightly together Loveland turned away to pass the order to Black Dick, the cook.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Milton's party entered the restaurant, and Mr. Cohen murmured his comment to Isidora who, at her father's urgent suggestion, was hovering about that young gentleman's table, looking her prettiest.
Tony Kidd, at Mrs. Milton's request, had telephoned for a table for eight, to be withdrawn as far as possible from the big front window, that dinner and diners need not be criticised by the man in the street. Alexander had, therefore, caused Blinkey to drag the largest table in the room close to the curtained door at the back. At this table—by the time Loveland had given Cohen's order to Black Dick, and returned across the corridor which divided the restaurant from the kitchen—the four pretty women and their escorts had taken their seats.
The door behind the curtain was never shut in business hours; and as Loveland pushed back the red drapery, carrying a tray loaded with ice cream for the Italians, he looked straight into the eyes of Elinor Coolidge, Mrs. Milton, and the newspaper man, Tony Kidd.
They and their companions had already been searching the room for him, but their presence took him completely by surprise.
Not since early morning had he found a moment's rest. He had had no appetite, and would have had little time to eat even if he had been hungry. The day's work had irritated and unnerved him up to the last notch of his endurance. No battle of his brief but lively South African experience had cost him physically or mentally as much as these thirteen hours of waiting on Alexander's customers, and the sudden sight of those familiar faces, smiling coolly on his shame, came upon him like a volley of bullets from a quick-firing gun.
Involuntarily he took a step back, knocked the edge of the tray against the door-post, and dropped it with a crash of breaking crockery. Plates smashed, spoons flew, and ice-cream gushed among the ruins. Blinkey and the Polish waiter sprang to their colleague's assistance, not displeased, however, that he should be disgraced. Alexander scolded, the Italian bride screamed, and had to be reassured by the bridegroom. Leo Cohen laughed disagreeably; Isidora jumped; and Mrs. Milton's party looked at each other from under lifted eyebrows.
