The lady thirstily demanded the wine. Bindle lifted it from its receptacle, wound a napkin round it as he had seen others do and, nippers in hand, carried it to the table.
He cut the wires. Suddenly about half a dozen different things seemed to happen at the same moment. The cork leapt joyously from the neck of the bottle and, careering across the room, caught the edge of the monocle of a diner and planted it in the soup of another at the next table, just as he was bending down to take a spoonful. The liquid sprayed his face. He looked up surprised, not having seen the cause. He who had lost the monocle began searching about in a short-sighted manner for his lost property.
The cork, continuing on its way, took full in the right eye a customer of gigantic proportions. He dropped his knife and fork and roared with pain. Bindle watched the course of the cork in amazement, holding the bottle as a fireman does the nozzle of a hose. From the neck squirted a stream of white foam, catching the lady of the white boots, rouge and peroxide full in the face. She screamed.
"You damn fool!" yelled the man to Bindle.
In his amazement Bindle turned suddenly to see from what quarter this rebuke had come, and the wine caught the man just beneath the chin. Never had champagne behaved so in the whole history of Napolini's. A superintendent rushed up and, with marvellous presence of mind, seized a napkin and stopped the stream. Then he snatched the bottle from Bindle's hands, at the same time calling down curses upon his head for his stupidity.
The lady in white boots, rouge and peroxide was gasping and dabbing her face with a napkin, which was now a study in pink and white. Her escort was feeling the limpness of his collar and endeavouring to detach his shirt from his chest. The gentleman who had lost his monocle was explaining to the owner of the soup what had happened, and asking permission to fish for the missing crystal that was lying somewhere in the depths of the stranger's mulligatawny.
Bindle was gazing from one to the other in astonishment. "Fancy champagne be'avin' like that," he muttered. "Might 'ave been a stone-ginger in 'ot weather."
At that moment the superintendent discovered the wine-cooler full of hot water. One passionate question he levelled at Bindle, who nodded cheerfully in reply. Yes, it was he who had put the champagne bottle in hot water.
This sealed Bindle's fate as a waiter. Determined not to allow him out of his sight again, the superintendent haled him off to the manager's room, there to be formally discharged.
"Ah! this is the man," said the manager to an inspector of police with whom he was engaged in conversation as Bindle and the superintendent entered.