The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon Part 38

A sleepy waiter with a soup-stained vest came from the inner room presently.

"Gimme a Devil's Delight," ordered Tidbury Epps recklessly.

He had heard that Greenwich Village, the untrammeled, laughs openly in the teeth of the Eighteenth Amendment. He had never in his life tasted an alcoholic drink, but to-night he was stopping at nothing. The Devil's Delight came, and Tidbury as he sipped its pink saccharinity found himself feeling that the devil is rather easily delighted. He had expected the potion to make his head buzz; but it did not. Instead it distinctly suggested rather weak and not very superior strawberry sirup and carbonated water. He crooked a summoning finger at the waiter.

"Horse's Neck," he commanded.

The Horse's Neck made its appearance, an insipid-looking amber fluid with a wan piece of lemon peel floating shamefacedly on its surface.

"Tastes just like ginger ale to me," remarked Mr. Epps. "Wadjuh expeck in a Horse's Neck?" queried the waiter bellicosely. "Chloride of lime?"

"I can't feel it at all," complained Mr. Epps.

"Feel it?" The waiter raised his brows. "Say, what do you think this joint is? A dump? We ain't bootleggers, mister."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Epps.

He was about to go elsewhere, when a babel of excited voices outside the door made him sink back into his chair; evidently the promise of the tatting matron was to be made good, and Ye Amiable Oyster was about to liven up.

The first thing that entered the door was an animal--a full-size, s.h.a.ggy anthropoid ape, big as a man. Mr. Epps was too alarmed to bolt. But as the creature careened into the light Mr. Epps observed that his face was human and slightly Hibernian. Behind him came a girl, rather sketchily dressed for autumn in a pair of bead portieres, a girdle or two, and a gilt plaster bird, which was bound firmly to her head. Mr. Epps had seen things like her on cigarette boxes. A second couple followed, hilarious.

The man wore a tight velvet suit, a sombrero several yards around, black mustaches of prodigious length and bristle that did not match the red of his hair, and earrings the size of cantaloupes; it was not clear whether he was intended to be a pirate or an organ grinder or a compromise between the two; but it was clear that he was in a state where it did not matter, to him, in the least. His companion wore a precarious garment of dry gra.s.s, and her arms were stained brown; at intervals she conveyed the information to the general atmosphere that she was a bimbo from a bamboo isle.

The four, after an impromptu ring-around-a-rosie, collapsed into chairs near the wide-eyed Epps. Fascinated he stared at them--the first authentic natives of Greenwich Village on whom his cloistered eye had ever rested.

"Ginger ale," bawled the ape.

It was brought. The ape dipping into a fold in his anatomy brought to light a capacious flask, kissed it solemnly, and poured its contents into the gla.s.ses of the others.

"Jake, that sure is the real old stuff," said the girl in the gra.s.s dress.

"Made it m'sef," said the ape proudly. "Y'see, I took dozen apricots, and ten pounds sugar, and some yeast and some raisins, and mixed 'em in a jug, and added water and----"

"That's nine times we heard all about that," interrupted the pirate or organ grinder. "Better be careful, anyhow. Mebbe that guy is a revnoo officer."

They all turned to stare at Mr. Epps.

"Of course he ain't 'nofficer, Ed," protested the ape, surveying Tidbury with care. "He's got too kind a face. You ain't 'nofficer, are you?"

"No," said Tidbury.

"What did I tell yuh?" cried the ape, triumphantly, to his companions.

"Shove up your chair, old sport, and have a drink with us. You look like a live one. I like your face."

Thus bidden, Tidbury, with an air of abandon, joined the group. The ape named Jake tilted his flask over Tidbury's spiritless Horse's Neck with such vehement good-fellowship that a gush of pungent brown fluid spurted from the container. Tidbury downed the mixture at a gulp; it made tears start to his eyes and a conflagration flame up in his brain.

"Howzit?" demanded Jake the ape.

"'Sgoo'," answered Tidbury warmly.

"Have 'nuther. Got plenty," said Jake, producing a second flask from another recess in his s.h.a.ggy skin. "I like your face."

"Don't care if I do," said Tidbury nonchalantly.

The lights in the near-cafe were very bright, the voices very high, the conversation exquisitely witty, the mechanical piano a symphonic rhapsody, and the heart of Tidbury Epps was pumping with wild, unwonted pumps; he smiled to himself. He was going to the devil at a great rate.

He waxed loquacious. He told them anecdotes; he even sang a little.

He beamed upon Jake, and playfully plucked a tuft of hair from his costume.

"Nice li'l' monkey," he said affably.

"Not a monkey!" denied Jake indignantly.

"Wad are you? S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e?"

"Nope. Not a S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e."

"Ran-tan?"

"Nope. Not a ran-tan."

"Bamboo?"

"Nope. Not a bamboo."

"Well, wad are you?"

Jake thumped his hairy chest proudly.

"I'm a griller," he explained.

"Oh," said Mr. Epps, satisfied. "A griller. Of course! Is it hard work?"

"Work?" cried Jake. "Say, this ain't my real skin. It's a 'sguise."

"Oh," said Mr. Epps. "So you're 'sguised? Wad did you do?"

"Careful, Jake," the organ grinder or pirate warned. "He may be a revnoo officer."

The gorilla turned on him angrily.

"Lookahere, Ed Peterson, how dare you pa.s.s remarks like that about my ole friend, Mr. ---- What is your name, anyhow? Of course he ain't no revnofficer? Are you?"

"I'll fight anybody who says I am," declared Tidbury Epps, glaring fiercely around at the empty chairs and tables.

"You a fighter?" inquired the gorilla, in a voice in which awe, admiration and alcohol mingled.

Mr. Epps contracted his brow and narrowed his eyes.