The Italian shrugged philosophically and counted on his grimy fingers.
“Twenta-two.” He looked up with a grimace. “Bad-a biz to-day!”
“We’ll take the lot,” declared his customer. “Tie the stems of them together in two bunches if you can. Here’s your money.”
The bargain was soon concluded and they sallied forth with their burden, but it excited so much comment, chiefly of a humorous nature, that McCarty himself was glad to subside in the depths of a taxi encountered on a side-street.
“Don’t sit all over me!” he warned his companion irritably as they started anew. “You’ll be bu’sting the damn things before we get home! Is it grinning the chauffeur is, the blockhead?”
“’Tis two lunatics he thinks he’s driving!” Dennis averred gloomily. “He’d grin with the other side of his mouth if he knew he was carrying a load of sudden death, maybe!—I’ll thank you to move over yourself, Timothy McCarty, and not be poking them gas-bags in my face!”
Thereafter conversation languished until they drew up before the door of McCarty’s rooms. Monsieur Girard, the dealer in antiques, came to the door of his shop and raised his withered hands heaven-ward at this latest demonstration of his neighbor’s eccentricity, but McCarty vouchsafed him only a curt nod and then followed Dennis, who was gingerly ascending the stairs, guarding his cargo with almost maternal solicitude.
In the living-room he deposited it in the middle of the floor and opened the windows wide before turning on the light. The balloons rose slowly ceilingward in a variegated cluster and he made a wild dive to secure them.
“Tie your bunch to the arm of the chair,” McCarty directed. “We’ll start with mine. Hold them till I get out my pen-knife and jab it into one.”
Dennis shut his eyes tightly and holding his breath extended his long arm until the joints cracked but a sharp pop like the shot of a miniature revolver made him gasp, forgetting his caution. He opened his eyes to behold one of the balloons hanging, a mere deflated wisp, at the end of its stick.