AN APPETISER AT ROBERT'S BAR
"Have another whisky, old sport?"
"Not I! We have taken too much on board as it is."
"You must! You must! Seen through the gold of old Scotch, life seems more beautiful, and the barmaids more fetching."
Perched on the high stools which allowed them to lean on the rail of the bar the two topers solemnly clinked glasses.
The younger of the two, a lean, dark fellow, emptied his glass at one go, but his companion, a big fair man about thirty-five, clean shaven, and slightly bald, handled his glass so awkwardly that the contents escaped on to the floor.
The big fair man called for fresh drinks. Their glasses were refilled so quickly that the dark young man failed to notice it: he drank on and on automatically, as though wound up to do so, but his companion barely wetted his lips with the intoxicating liquor.
It was six o'clock and a dismal December evening; but there was an animated cosmopolitan crowd in Robert's bar.
Robert's of London is the equivalent of Maxim's of Paris. The great place for luxurious entertainments, it opens its doors at twilight, and does not close them till the small hours are well advanced. When evening falls, the scene grows animated: business men and women of pleasure crowd the rooms. Gradually the crowd assumes a cosmopolitan character. A band of Hungarian gipsies plays inspiriting and seductive music. The crush increases, the noise grows louder, and amidst this babel of voices, the racket, the din, the barmaids ply their trade with calm determination: they flirt with their customers and egg them on to drink glass after glass of wine and spirits for the good of the house, in an atmosphere thick with tobacco smoke.
Every ten minutes or so, a newspaper boy slips in with the latest evening editions, to be chased out by one of the managers of mixed nationality who, for the most part, talk in a strangely mixed tongue, partly French, partly English.