"What's your drink?"
"What's your offer?"
Hogshead Geoffrey, also nicknamed "The Barrel," thumped the table with a formidable fist, at the risk of upsetting a pile of saucers, which, at this advanced hour of the evening, showed clearly how he had spent the hours passed in the wine-shop.
"What do I offer?" he retorted. "I offer what's wanted. I don't haggle. When I ask a fellow: 'Old man, what do you want to wet your gullet?' that means: 'Choose.' There now!"
Hogshead Geoffrey's companion merely said:
"Pass the programme!"
Once in possession of the wine-list—if such could be called the crumpled, dirty paper on which the owner of the house had scribbled in pencil the fresh drinks, composed of indescribable mixtures specially recommended to his clients—the guest of Hogshead Geoffrey became absorbed in the list of strange beverages.
So mean-looking an individual was this guest that he had been nicknamed "The Scrub." He also answered to the more aristocratic title of "Sacristan." Once he had been sacristan at the church of Saint-Sulpice, but intemperate habits had led to his dismissal. What odd link there was between this sorry little fellow and the robust Geoffrey?[7]
[7] See Fantômas: vol. i, Fantômas Series
The Scrub ordered: "A thick 'un—jolly thick!" He eyed his host.