“Very shortly, unless the taxi breaks down.”
“Hurry!”
“Surely. Good-by!”
He hung up the reverberant receiver and said to the telephone-boy: “If anybody calls me, I've gone out. No matter who calls me, I'm out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then he went to the card-room, found that the game had gone on without him, cashed in his chips, and excused himself. He was neither winning nor losing, so that he could not be accused of “cold feet.” That was one of the most intolerable accusations to him. He could violate any of the Commandments, but in the sportsman's decalogue “Thou shalt not have cold feet” was one that he honored in the observance, not the breach.
He went down to the reading-room, a palatial hall fifty yards long with a table nearly as big as a railroad platform, on a tremendous rug as wide and deep as a lawn. About it were chairs and divans that would have satisfied a lotus-eater.
Cheever avoided proffers of conversation and pretended to read the magazines and newspapers. He kept his eyes on the doors. He did not want to take any one into his confidence, as he felt that, after all, Zada might have been out of her head. He did not want any seconds or bottle-holders. He was not afraid. Still, he did not care to be surprised by a mad bull. He felt that he could play toreador with neatness and despatch provided he could foresee the charge.
Among the magazines Cheever glanced at was one with an article on various modes of self-defense, jiu-jitsu, and other devices by which any clever child could apparently remove or disable a mad elephant. But Cheever's traditions did not incline to such methods. He had the fisting habit. He did not feel called toward clinching or choking, twisting, tripping, knifing, swording, or sandbagging. His wrath expressed itself, and gaily, in the play of the triceps muscle. For mobility he used footwork and headwork. For shield he had his forearms or his open hands—for weapons, the ten knuckles at the other end of the exquisite driving-shafts beginning in his shoulder-blades.
He had been a clever fighter from childhood. He had been a successful boxer and had followed the art in its professional and amateur developments. He knew more of prize-ring history and politics than of any other. He often regretted that his inherited money had robbed him of a career as a heavy-weight. He was not so big as Dyckman, but he had made fools of bigger men. He felt that the odds were a trifle in his favor, especially if Dyckman were angry, as he must be to go roaring about town frightening one silly woman for another's sake.