Muggs's plan was quite apparent. He wanted an all-around treaty of peace. He was still levying blackmail; the thing he demanded was not cash, but a character.
“That's exactly what I hope to do,” he explained. “I shall have all kinds of money, and I propose to square every account.”
“That's all right, provided Mrs. Mullet knows the whole plan and is willing to undertake the responsibility.”
He looked into my eyes, and said clearly in his smile: “You're the worst ass of a lawyer that I ever saw in my life. I've tried to be decent, and you've wiped your boots on me. Wait and see what happens now.”
All that seemed to be in his smile, but not a word of it passed his lips. He neatly adjusted the blue monocle and lifted his hat and said “Good afternoon,” and walked away.
I, too, had my smile, for I could not help thinking how this biter was being bitten, and how his old friends, the ghosts of the past, were now bearing down upon him.
We tramped to St. Peters, where squads of tourists seemed to be reading prayers out of red prayer-books and where a learned judge from Seattle, who had lost his pocket-book in a crowd near the statue of St. Peter, was delivering impassioned and highly prejudiced views of church and state to the members of his party.
We lunched at Latour's, where a long and limber-looking blond lady, who sat beside a Pomeranian poodle with a napkin tucked under his collar, consumed six cups of coffee and a foot and a half of cigarettes while we were eating. She was one of the most engaging ruins of the feudal world. What a theme for an artist was in the painted face and the sign of the dog! The head waiter told us that she was an American who had been studying art in Italy for years.
She ought to be mentioned in the guidebooks, I thought, as we were leaving.
We tramped miles to an old barracks of a building called the Cancellaria, which, according to Baedeker, was clothed in “majestic simplicity.”