"Boy, you can dance," breathed Sophie, slowly disengaging herself from his embrace as the music stopped.
He looked at her. "You're a witch, Sophie, a soft, white witch," he whispered.
They had another round of highballs. Bill Terhune, fast attaining a fighting edge, began abusing the waitress. In his growing quarrelsomeness, he noticed that Betty Brewster was not to be compared in pulchritude to Sophie. He breathed alcoholically upon the latter and demanded with unnecessary peremptoriness that she dance next with him. With a little grimace of annoyance at Rodrigo, she turned smilingly to Bill and acquiesced.
After the next dance, Terhune again produced his enormous flask, whose contents seemed capable of flowing endlessly, like Tennyson's brook. Rodrigo suggested mildly that they had all had enough. But the motion was overruled, three to one. Bill's watery and roving eye caught the equally itinerant optics of a sleek, dark girl two feet from him, at the next table. She smiled veiledly, and he elaborately offered her a drink. Rodrigo was not pleased with this by-play. He had been watching the girl's escort, a florid chubby stock-broker type who had also been drinking copiously and who now eyed Bill Terhune with a decidedly disapproving frown. With a defiant toss of her shiny bobbed head at her middle-aged table-mate, the dark girl accepted the glass and bent her ear to hear Bill's blurred invitation to dance that accompanied it. The tom-toms and saxophones commenced their lilting cadence, and Bill's new conquest and Bill arose simultaneously to dance. So did the fat man. He seized Bill's wrist, which was around the girl.
Rodrigo was to his feet in a flash. He knew Bill Terhune. He caught the Dakotan's wrist as, eluding the jealous sugar daddy's grip, it was whipped back and started on its swift devastating journey to the corpulent one's jaw. "No rough stuff, Bill," Rodrigo cautioned rapidly in a low voice. Bill turned angrily upon his friend, but the Italian held his wrist like a vise. The eyes of all three girls were popping with excitement. They were in the mood to enjoy the sight of embattled males.
"Come on outside and I'll show you how much of a sheik you are," snarled Bill's red-faced antagonist.
Bill was keen to comply, and Rodrigo, welcoming the chance at least to transfer the impending brawl to a less conspicuous battleground, loosed him. The two champions set off for the lobby, picking their way unsteadily through the staring dancers, Rodrigo by Bill's side, endeavoring to talk him into a less belligerent mood, hopeless as the task was. Once in the wide open spaces of the lobby, Bill suddenly eluded Rodrigo's arm upon his shoulder, leaped toward his adversary, and smote him cleanly upon the jaw. The fat man crashed against a fantastic wall painting of Gilda Grey and remained huddled quietly where he had landed. All the fight had been knocked out of him by this one sledge-hammer blow. Bill, his honor vindicated, was contented also. All that remained was for Rodrigo to soothe the feelings of the worried manager, who arrived on the run, and two husky bouncers, now standing by to toss the embroiled patrons out upon the sidewalk.
Rodrigo did his task of diplomacy very nicely. The manager cooperated, being anxious to avoid trouble. Cold water was administered to the fallen gladiator. The girl who had caused all the trouble was summoned. Contrite at the sight of her escort's damaged countenance, she readily agreed to take him home, and the two were bundled into a taxicab.
Then the manager turned to Rodrigo and insisted firmly that the other brawler should leave also. He could not afford further disturbances, which might involve the police, however loathe the bluecoats might be to interfere with the licensed Quartier Latin. Bill began to see red all over again at this edict. But there were two husky bouncers at his elbow, and Rodrigo supported the manager. Betty Brewster was paged, and Bill, muttering and defiant to the last, followed in another taxi in the wake of his enemy.
Having banished Bill Terhune to the cool night air, Rodrigo turned to hasten back to Sophie, who, he was afraid, would be furious at him for leaving her sitting alone for such a long time.