A Man's Man

by Ian Hay

He was recalled from these musings by the remembrance of the girl at the piano, and turned to see what was happening now.

Mr. Noddy Kinahan was returning from an expedition to the bar, carrying a bottle of champagne and a long tumbler. These accessories to conviviality he placed on the top of the piano, and departed on a second trip, returning shortly with a wine-glassful of brandy. The girl, though she probably observed more of his movements than her low-drooping lashes would seem to allow, made no sign, but continued to play the ragtime tune with a mechanical precision which caused the tumbler on the top of the piano to tread a lively and self-accompanied measure round its more stolid and heavily weighted companion.

Mr. Kinahan next proceeded to pour himself out a tumblerful of champagne, liberally lacing the foaming liquid with brandy. Then, with an ingratiating gesture toward the shrinking girl, he proceeded to swallow the mixture with every appearance of enjoyment.

"King's peg!" commented Hughie to himself. "Wonder how much of that he can stand? I'd back him against friend Allerton, though, if it came—Hallo! The hound! This must stop!"

He half rose to his feet. Mr. Kinahan, having satisfied his present needs, had refilled the tumbler with champagne, added the rest of the brandy, and was now proffering the potion, in the self-same vessel which he had just honoured with his own august lips, to the girl at the piano.

The girl turned crimson and shook her head, but kept on playing.

Noddy Kinahan was not accustomed to bestow favours in vain. He walked round behind the piano, and, taking the girl firmly by the shoulders with his left arm, held the sizzling tumbler to her lips. She uttered a strangled cry, left off playing, and struggled frantically to seize the glass with her hands.

Now Hughie Marrable had a healthy prejudice in favour of minding his own business. He had witnessed scenes of this description before, and he knew that, place and company considered, the girl at the piano was probably not unaccustomed to accept refreshment at the hands of gentlemen, even when the gentleman was half-drunk, the hands dirty, and the refreshment (after allowing a generous discount for spillings) sufficiently potent to deprive any ordinary woman, within ten minutes, of any sort of control over her own actions or behaviour. Moreover, Hughie had a truly British horror of a scene. But—

He was surprised to feel himself leap from his chair and bound toward the piano. His surprise, however, was nothing to that experienced a moment later by Mr. Noddy Kinahan, who, having succeeded in pinning the desperately resisting girl's arms to her sides, was now endeavouring to prise her lips open with the edge of the tumbler. But there are slips even after the cup has reached the lip. Just as success appeared to be about to crown Mr. Kinahan's hospitable efforts, a large and sinewy hand shot over his right shoulder and snatched away the glass, which it threw under the piano. Simultaneously an unseen force in the rear shook him till his teeth rattled, and then, depressing his head to the level of the keyboard, began to play a lively if staccato tune thereon with the point of Mr. Kinahan's rubicund and fleshy nose.

These operations were more or less screened from the public view by the body of the piano, which was an "upright" of the cottage variety. But the sudden cessation of "The Washington Post" in favour of what sounded like "The Cat's Polka" played by a baby with its feet, brought the proprietor of the establishment hurrying across the room. He arrived just in time to be present at the conclusion of a florid chromatic scale of about four octaves, executed under the guidance of Hughie Marrable's heavy hand by Mr. Kinahan's somewhat abraded nasal organ.