Another favorite trick was for a man to enter with one or two women and purchase tickets only for them.
“Where is yours, senhor?”
“Eu volto” (I am coming back) was the unvarying reply, by which the speaker meant to imply that he was merely going to escort the ladies to their seats and come right out again, but in almost every case he remained an hour or more until the “Kinetophone” number had been run and came slinking out with the air of having kept eyes and ears tight closed during the performance.
No doubt many of the well-dressed, haughty individuals I sent to the box-office were state senators and the like, but what of it? We were paying heavily to support them, paying every time we moved from one town to another, every time we gave a performance, every time we left or entered a state, in addition to what we had paid to enter the country, every time we drew a check, or put up a poster, or inserted an advertisement, and even in my most charitable mood I could not see why we should give free entertainment to any government official who was not there in line of duty.
During the second section a chinless, pomaded popinjay in full evening dress, with an own-the-earth air, pushed scornfully past when I asked for his ticket. I stepped in his way, repeated my question, and finally laid a hand lightly on his arm, whereupon the manager, frightened to a kind of grayish pink, came running forward to assure me “It’s all right.”
“But who is he?” I insisted.
“I’ll tell you later,” whispered the trembling mulatto.
The chinless individual, who turned out to be the delegado, corresponding to our chief of police, remained only a few minutes, all the while plainly boiling with rage. As he came out he stopped before me—the rush having ceased I was seated—and in a voice and manner that no doubt scared ordinary people to death, he growled:
“Before you ever grasp anyone by the arm again you want to know who he IS!”
“Senhor,” I replied, without rising, which is a shocking insult even to the most petty Brazilian official, “I want to know who everyone is, and any man who is a cavalheiro will tell who he is under such circumstances in any civilized country, and until I know who he is I’ll catch him by the arm or by any other part of the anatomy that is handy.”