"But you'll be in it, Gib. Passes of your own you'll be putting out. Ha! Listen this once while I try to do you good in spite of yourself, my friend. You can't walk out after eating up the hamburgers I bought."
He had me there. I could not muster the price of that second sandwich, and somehow the shrewd little fellow had surmised as much. He chuckled in triumph as I shrugged in token of surrender.
"I knew you would, Gib. Now, here." He wrote on a card. "This is Varduk's hotel and room number. Be there at eight o'clock tonight, to read the play and talk terms. And here."
His second proffer was a wad of money.
"Get some clothes, Gib. With a new suit and tie you'll look like a million dollars come home to roost. No, no. Take the dough and don't worry. Ain't we friends? If you never pay me back, it will be plenty soon enough."
He beamed my thanks away. Leaving the hamburger stand, we went in opposite directions.
2. Byron's Lost Play
I did not follow Jake's suggestion exactly. Instead of buying new garments throughout, I went to the pawnshop where I had of late raised money on the remnants of a once splendid wardrobe. Here I redeemed a blue suit that would become me best, and a pair of hand-made Oxfords. Across the street I bought a fresh shirt and necktie. These I donned in my coffin-sized room on the top floor of a cheap hotel. After washing, shaving and powdering, I did not look so bad; I might even have been recognized as the Gilbert Connatt who made history in the lavish film version of Lavengro, that classic of gipsydom in which a newcomer named Sigrid Holgar had also risen to fame....
I like to be prompt, and it was eight o'clock on the stroke when I tapped at the door of Varduk's suite. There was a movement inside, and then a cheerful voice: "Who's there?"