“But how does that help us any?”
“Well—maybe we can get him so drunk he’ll go home and go to bed, and then we can slip away to Corbeil and get married.”
Clark smiled doubtfully. “I’ll try anything when it’s necessary,” he said. “We’ll have to work pretty fast and we’ll probably go broke buying drinks enough to put that tanker under the table.... But I can do that in these clothes—why the masquerade?”
“Because then, wherever we are, we can go right along and get married without having to go back for me to change.”
“You mean I’ll be the bride and you the man?” he demanded incredulously.
“Surely.... You give me the papers and your belt and bars, and I’ll be Captain Winstead for the evening.”
“It’s a go!” he agreed. “But I’ll keep my uniform on underneath, in case there should be any trouble. We can fix you up in the taxi on the way out to Corbeil.”
So he left us and I set about pouring drinks into Ben while I explained about the Captain’s impending joke on his friends. Ben thought it an excellent joke. Said he’d much rather have a woman on the party than an officer, “because bars and badges give me the willies.”
Note after note came out of my pocket never to return again. Clark came back, looking very modish in the outfit he had procured somewhere. We set out to let Ben drink the city dry, and I knew from the beginning that it was going to be a long drawn out process, because his capacity was really something to wonder at. I mean, it was just like a bottomless well, and a dozen drinks more or less didn’t make much difference in the total depth or effect.
After we had visited four places, he began to get suspicious because we weren’t drinking with him, so Clark had to join him a few times.... We went on, from one wine shop to another, from café to buvette, from dive to cabaret, on and on through a never ending series of stops for things to dull the spirit and anæsthetize the mind of this persistent “best man.”