“You’re a liar,” he returned, promptly.
“I tell you you were down to the ferry to meet me. I pulled you off that turn-table!”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ross Sidney, I say! You’re expecting me. I’m a diver.”
But he did not show the least evidence of understanding what I was talking about. It’s a familiar phase of drunkenness in many men—that dogged determination to hang on to one notion and admit no others.
He shook his head and waggled the feather under the girl’s nose.
“This is a private party,” he growled.
“But your daughter is waiting for you—she is very much worried about you and the money.”
“Say, who does this money and this daughter and this room here belong to, anyway? Who do I belong to? Who am I? Ain’t I Rask Holstrom, fifty-six years old, and fully able to take care of myself anywhere between Point Lobo and India Basin?” He squinted at me along the peacock’s plume. “Who are you? You say my girl is at the ferry, hey? How do you know she is there?” He leaned back in his chair, dropped the feather, and yanked a canvas bag from the right-hand pocket of his trousers. It was a plump bag, and a heavy bag, and it plainly contained hard money. He banged it down on the table with such a thump that the girl hopped and squealed, and it barely missed her toes. He pulled another canvas bag from the left-hand pocket, and crashed that down. This time he connected with the girl’s toes. She screamed in pain, leaped down from the table, and began to hop around the room, kicking her foot out behind her. She stumbled into a corner, braced herself there, and began to swear volubly, clutching the tip of her faded red-velvet slipper in both hands.
I had not broken in on his monologue. I could not match him in roaring. Then for the first time he seemed to note that the girl was not in an amiable state of mind.