Teddy seized upon one. “This,” he said, inspecting it, “is a fossil rhinoceros thigh-bone from the Crag.”
“It’s an Antediluvium horse,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Forgive me! It’s a rhinoceros bone!”
“Horses had rhinoceros bones in those days,” said Mr. Preemby. “And the rhinoceroses—! They were incredible. If I had one I shouldn’t have anywhere to put it.”
Mr. Preemby was extracted from his overall and restored to the black coat and the grey felt hat with the black band. He became one of a straggling party that went out of Lonsdale Mews to a little Italian restaurant in the King’s Road. Three neighbours of the Crumbs mixed themselves up with the party, a very quiet man with silver hair and a young man and a dusky girl.
Mr. Preemby was much impressed by the novelty of thus going out for dinner, and expatiated on its advantages to the silver-haired man who seemed to be the quiet sort of listening man that Mr. Preemby liked to meet. “You see you don’t have to cook the meal and you don’t have to lay the table and afterwards naturally there isn’t any washing up. But I expect it comes more expensive.”
The silver-haired man nodded intelligently. “Exactly,” he said.
Harold Crumb overheard this. “Expensive,” he said, “it isn’t. No. Every other crime Poppinetti can commit, but that is barred by the circumstances of his clientele. He feeds us on stolen pigeons, his dinde is guinea-pig, his beef, a l’omnibus: what he minces God knows; what he puts into his ravioli makes even the Lord God repent of his extreme creativeness. But you see, you don’t think about his ravioli, you eat ’em, and they’re damned good. There are always flowers on the table and an effect of inexpensive refinement. You will see. You will see.”
Mr. Preemby saw. Poppinetti was a small man but carefully modelled on Caruso, and he received his large party with the deference of a diplomatist and the effusion of a geyser. He was particularly gracious to Mr. Preemby, bowing profoundly to him, and saluting him with great richness subsequently whenever he caught his eye. He seemed to Mr. Preemby to spend the rest of their time together going to remoter and remoter parts of the restaurant in order to catch Mr. Preemby’s eye and bow and smile to him from greater and greater distances. Mr. Preemby had curious doubts whether he wasn’t being mistaken for somebody else.
Signor Poppinetti, with an air of peculiar favour, guided the party to a long, unattractive table near the centre of the restaurant and took their conflicting orders with the gestures of a conductor guiding an orchestra through a difficult passage. Mr. Preemby was passive but observant; he presently found himself eating macaroni and drinking a rough red wine with a name that sounded to his London tuned ears like a challenge. Chianti.