The restaurant had gradually filled up with people. The waitress and the patron, a fat man with a wide red sash coiled tightly round his waist, moved with difficulty among the crowded tables. A woman at a table in the corner, with dead white skin and drugged staring eyes, kept laughing hoarsely, leaning her head, in a hat with bedraggled white plumes, against the wall. There was a constant jingle of plates and glasses, and an oily fume of food and women's clothes and wine.
“D'you want to know what I really did with your friend?” said Heineman, leaning towards Andrews.
“I hope you didn't push him into the Seine.”
“It was damn impolite.... But hell, it was damn impolite of him not to drink.... No use wasting time with a man who don't drink. I took him into a cafe and asked him to wait while I telephoned. I guess he's still waiting. One of the whoreiest cafes on the whole Boulevard Clichy.” Heineman laughed uproariously and started explaining it in nasal French to M. le Guy.
Andrews flushed with annoyance for a moment, but soon started laughing. Heineman had started singing again.
“O, Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome,
In bad in Trinidad
And twice as bad at home,
O, Sinbad was in bad all around!”
Everybody clapped. The white-faced woman in the corner cried “Bravo, Bravo,” in a shrill nightmare voice.
Heineman bowed, his big grinning face bobbing up and down like the face of a Chinese figure in porcelain.
“Lui est Sinbad,” he cried, pointing with a wide gesture towards Henslowe.
“Give 'em some more, Heinz. Give them some more,” said Henslowe, laughing.