CHAPTER XXIII
"Gas!"
The hubbub in the restaurant was tremendous. Well-dressed people can jostle and clamour and crush just as selfishly as anybody else, and those of the lunchers who were not near enough stood up on their chairs to get a better view.
The musician picked himself up with a fried sole embossed on the back of his dress coat and two portions of hot soup running down his neck, to say nothing of blobs of mashed potato and the contents of overturned cruets all over him.
"I've got one of you, anyhow," said Dennis in German, as he seized him by the collar. "You'd better have sat tight among your fiddles, and allowed Madame von Dussel to play her own dirty game."
If the musician's look could have killed, there would have been another vacancy in the Reedshires.
The cause of all the tumult confronted Dennis, purple with indignation, and began to bluster. But another officer had wormed himself resolutely forward through the crush.
"I want to know what the deuce you mean, sir!" demanded the indignant major, but the new-comer interrupted him.