"Take it away," he said, quivering. "I don't want it in a coffee-pot."
"We always sairve the whisky in the coffee-pot, Mr. Feench. You know that."
Across the table George was appalled by a sinister sight. The man opposite was rising. Yards and yards of him were beginning to uncoil, and on his face there was a strange look of determination and menace.
"You're...."
George knew what the next word would have been. It would have been the verb "pinched." But it was never uttered. With a sudden frenzy, George Finch acted. He was not normally a man of violence, but there are occasions when violence and nothing but violence will meet the case. There flashed through his mind a vision of what would be, did he not act with promptitude and despatch. He would be arrested, haled to jail, immured in a dungeon-cell. And Molly would come back and find no one there to welcome her and—what was even worse—no one to marry her on the morrow.
George did not hesitate. Seizing the table-cloth, he swept it off in a hideous whirl of apple-pie, ice water, bread, potatoes, salad and poulet rôti. He raised it on high, like a retarius in the arena, and brought it down in an enveloping mass on the policeman's head. Interested cries arose on all sides. The Purple Chicken was one of those jolly, informal restaurants in which a spirit of clean Bohemian fun is the prevailing note, but even in the Purple Chicken occurrences like this were unusual and calculated to excite remark. Four diners laughed happily, a fifth exclaimed "Hot pazazas!" and a sixth said "Well, would you look at that!"
The New York police are not quitters. They may be down, but they are never out. A clutching hand emerged from the table-cloth and gripped George's shoulder. Another clutching hand was groping about not far from his collar. The fingers of the first hand fastened their hold.
George was not in the frame of mind to be tolerant of this sort of thing. He hit out and smote something solid.
"Casta dimura salve e pura! 'At-a-boy! Soak him again," said Guiseppe, the waiter, convinced now that the man in the table-cloth was one who had not the best interests of the Purple Chicken at heart.
George did so. The table-cloth became still more agitated. The hand fell from his shoulder.