Haddon’s companion, therefore—and Haddon rather prided himself on his invariably well-groomed appearance—presented something of a noticeable turn-out when they entered the lobby of the great hotel where the banquet was to be, but he did not notice the apologetic grimaces Haddon gave in response to certain lifted eyebrows of his friends whom he met here and there.
“Well, come along, old man,” said he to his guest, at length. “We’ll leave our coats and hats here, and go and see if we can find some more of the fellows.”
He was not at a loss as to the place of search. The long glazed and marbled bar of the Williston at that time was thronged with hundreds, much athirst. Behind the vast reaches of mahogany stood many bartenders, all busy. Men in evening dress, with top hats and beautifully fitting evening wear, men impeccable in gloves and glasses and fit for presentation in any city of the world—stood here, laughing, talking, jesting, drinking. One after another all these now accosted Haddon, some with a sly word, a glance, a hint, a jest—things which he hushed down as soon as might be, for he knew the keen suspicion of the mountaineer.
“Well, what are you going to have to drink?” said he to Joslin at length, edging his own way up to the bar. “We’ve got to lay some sort of a foundation for the dinner, you know. What kind of cocktail do you want—Martini?”
“I never did drink nothin’ but plain corn liquor,” said Joslin. “If I could have jest a leetle of that now, maybe——”
“Nonsense! Have a cocktail. It’s too early for hard liquor yet. Make him another, John,” and he nodded to the bartender.
Joslin raised the little glass, whose contents seemed, in color at least, not unfamiliar to him as a mountain man, but he drank no more than half of the contents, and then set down the glass. It was his first and only cocktail. He made no comment as his host urged him, but moved away from the bar. Haddon himself remained to finish two or three more of the insidious potions before he himself turned and with the others began to move toward the quarters set apart for the banquet party.
By this time the crowd was much like the usual male banquet crowd—a trifle flushed of face, a trifle garrulous of tongue, each in his own heart happy, and each in his own belief quite witty and very much aplomb. They were seated in due course at the long tables arranged after the fashion of a Maltese cross. Haddon, it seemed, was to preside. He placed his guest at his own right, in the place of honor.
“Trust little old Jimmy to pull a thing off,” said one merchant to another. “He never went down to that country for nothing. He’s got the goods with him, and you can gamble on that. He told me himself how he caught this wild mountain man and brought him on to talk to us to-night. He knows every foot of the land in there, and he can tell us the whole works. Coal—gas—oil—those lands of ours are full of it! Looks like we were going to make a killing. Trust Jimmy. He’s one grand little live wire, if we’ve got one in our village.”
The dinner wore on, much as these things usually run—the original stage of hilarity somewhat modified under the sobering influence of food. It was all strange to Joslin, who, so it seemed to him, scarcely had one plate set before him before it was taken away and replaced by yet another. Few noticed what he did.