The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself now when the hidden spring of association was touched. But it brought a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look upon them. The man in the dingy apron thumped down a black demijohn on the table.
"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone.
Harry's companion poured both glasses. He leaned across the table with sparkling eyes. "I'm in the title-role," he confided. "The story is like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap—he has a grudge against me—has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho—a regular top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses, steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find him in possession. But in the house—he doesn't know this, you see—hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and the only way is to get into the place and take them."
He paused and sipped from the glass before him, then resumed:
"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture—a whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look here."
He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal table-top as he went on.
"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front—like this—fine old southern effect, eh?—with Cape Jessamine bushes under the windows. A long wing runs down one side—here. In there is the library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines—shadows and moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side—you know. I'm desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis and crawl in. There I am in the house."
He stopped and emptied his glass.
"There's a two-minute dark—no curtain, but a quick change, then lights up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and just then—"
"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the other—staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision, which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself, detached and moving through the significant scene that was being sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure spaces. He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that made him wince—"and then—"