The maitre de's face turned vermilion with a flush of rage. "Then suppose I just take it!" he said hotly. And with that he stepped boldly forward, wrapped his arms resolutely around the urn and began to pull. "Give it to me now," he grunted. "No use being stubborn, you know, it's not yours."
"Oh, good grief!" Toffee cried with exasperation. "Just look at them. Like a couple of crazy school kids with a dead mouse!" She turned to the Blemishes. "Do something!"
With dittoed expressions of perplexity, the brothers regarded Toffee, each other, and the problem of the besieged urn. Clearly it was time for them to take steps, but they didn't know in which direction. Simultaneously they moved forward to opposite sides of the urn, secured a hold on it, and began to pull against each other. The spellbound clientele of the Wynant looked on in confused wordlessness; no one could guess why the cigarette urn had become so furiously important to these struggling men all of a sudden; obviously it contained nothing more wonderful than a lot of sand and a few stubs. One gentleman, staring in entranced rapture, carefully lifted a sizeable portion of steak on his fork, lifted it upward, and with preoccupied care, deposited it, complete with mushroom sauce, in the depths of his breast pocket.
Meanwhile the insane contest at the head of the stairs had arrived at a state of complete impasse. Four different energies pulled in four different directions, one balanced just enough against the other to hold the urn perfectly motionless. Other than a rapidly deepening blueness in Marc's face, there was no evidence that the men had not simply joined together to provide a grotesquely decorative stand for the urn. That this constituted a condition of utter absurdity, Toffee was the first to realize. She placed herself impatiently at Gerald Blemish's side and raised her hands to her hips.
"Just what do you think you're doing, you nincompoop?" she hissed. "Let go."
Gerald looked up at her unhappily, considered, then let go. The three remaining contestants staggered drunkenly aside, still clinging doggedly to the urn.
"Show him your gun," Toffee directed.
Gerald thought about it, then bestirred himself. He went over to the maitre de and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The maitre de looked around.
"Look," Gerald said, taking his gun from his pocket and shoving it under the poor man's nose. "See?"