With rolling eyes and foaming mouth Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino screamed his maledictions. A group of waiters was bending over Herr Smith. One was administering brandy, another was plucking whitebait out of his whiskers, a third was trying to wipe the tomato soup from his shirt-front, an operation which transformed a red archipelago into a flaming continent.
When eventually the superintendent sat up, he looked like a whiskered robin redbreast. He gazed from one to the other of the waiters engaged upon his renovation. Then his eye fell upon Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino. He uttered the one significant British word.
"Berlice!"
When Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino left Napolini's that evening, it was in the charge of two policemen, with two more following to be prepared for eventualities. Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino was what is known professionally as "violent." Not satisfied with the food that was plastered upon his person, he endeavoured by means of his teeth to detach a portion of the right thigh of Police-constable Higgins, and with his feet to raise bruises where he could on the persons of his captors.
"Pore ole 'Okey-Pokey!" remarked Bindle, as he returned to the dining-room, where he had now been allotted two tables, for which he was to be entirely responsible. "Pore ole 'Okey-Pokey. I'm afraid I got 'is goat; but didn't 'e make a mess of Ole Whiskers!"
Herr Smith had gone home. When a man is sixty years of age and, furthermore, when he has been a superintendent of a restaurant for upwards of twenty-five years, he cannot with impunity be rammed in the solar-plexus by a hard-headed and vigorous Italian.
While Giuseppi Antonio Tolmenicino in a cell at Vine Street Police Station was forecasting the downfall of the Allies by the secession of Italy from the Entente, Bindle was striving to satisfy the demands of the two sets of customers that sat at his tables. He made mistakes, errors of commission and omission; but his obviously genuine desire to satisfy everybody inclined people to be indulgent.
The man who was waiting for pancakes received with a smile half-a-dozen oysters; whilst another customer was bewildered at finding himself expected to commence his meal with pancakes and jam. When such errors were pointed out, Bindle would scratch his head in perplexity, then, as light dawned upon him, he would break out into a grin, make a dive for the pancakes and quickly exchange them for the oysters.
The names of the various dishes he found almost beyond him and, to overcome the difficulty, he asked the customers to point out on the menu what they required. Then again he found himself expected to carry a multiplicity of plates and dishes.
At first he endeavoured to emulate his confrères. On one occasion he set out from the dining-room with three dishes containing respectively "caille en casserole," a Welsh rarebit, and a steak and fried potatoes. The steak and fried potatoes were for a lady of ample proportions with an almost alarmingly low-cut blouse. In placing the steak and metal dish of potatoes before her, Bindle's eye for a second left the other two plates, which began to tilt.