One of the men fetched him—a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him.
«Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw–breakers, Sloviski,» requested Mike Dowling. «We can't quite figure out whether he's from the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong–on–the–Ganges.»
Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale.
«I have you his name,» reported Sloviski. «You shall not pronounce it. Writing of it in paper is better.» They gave him paper, and he wrote, «Demetre Svangvsk.»
«Looks like short hand,» said the desk man.
«He speaks some language,» continued the interpreter, wiping his forehead, «of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not him quite understand.»
«Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?» asked Mike, frowning at the polyglot description.
«He is a» — answered Sloviski — «he is a—I dink he come from—I dink he is a fool,» he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, «and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen.»
«Whatever he is, he's a bird,» said Mike Dowling; «and you want to watch him fly.»
Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine–house and bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen.