The pale-eyed man took a glowing little affair with eyepieces away from in front of his eyes.
"Ah," he said. "So."
It was quite an attractive hotel, Mooney thought judiciously. It did a lot to take away the sting of those sordidly avaricious jewelers. The lobby was an impressively close approximation of a cathedral and the bellboys looked smart and able.
Harse made an asthmatic sound. "What is. That?" He was pointing at a group of men standing in jovial amusement around the entrance to the hotel's grand ballroom, just off the lobby. They wore purple harem pants and floppy green hats, and every one of them carried a silver-paper imitation of a scimitar.
Mooney chuckled in a superior way. "You aren't up on our local customs, are you? That's a convention, Harse. They dress up that way because they belong to a lodge. A lodge is a kind of fraternal organization. A fraternal organization is—"
Harse said abruptly: "I want."
Mooney began to feel alarm. "What?"
"I want one for a. Specimen? Wait, I think I take the big one there."
"Harse! Wait a minute!" Mooney clutched at him. "Hold everything, man! You can't do that."
Harse stared at him. "Why?"