There are, no doubt, restaurants where this sort of thing would have excited little comment, but the Cosmopolis was not one of them. Everybody had something to say, but the only one among those present who had anything sensible to say was the child in the sailor suit.
"Do it again!" said the child, cordially.
The Sausage Chappie did it again. He took up a fruit salad, poised it for a moment, then decanted it over Mr. Gossett's bald head. The child's happy laughter rang over the restaurant. Whatever anybody else might think of the affair, this child liked it and was prepared to go on record to that effect.
Epic events have a stunning quality. They paralyse the faculties. For a moment there was a pause. The world stood still. Mr. Brewster bubbled inarticulately. Mr. Gossett dried himself sketchily with a napkin. The Sausage Chappie snorted.
The girl had risen to her feet and was staring wildly.
"John!" she cried.
Even at this moment of crisis the Sausage Chappie was able to look relieved.
"So it is!" he said. "And I thought it was Lancelot!"
"I thought you were dead!"
"I'm not!" said the Sausage Chappie.
Mr. Gossett, speaking thickly through the fruit-salad, was understood to say that he regretted this. And then confusion broke loose again. Everybody began to talk at once.
"I say!" said Archie. "I say! One moment!"
Of the first stages of this interesting episode Archie had been a paralysed spectator. The thing had numbed him. And then--
Sudden a thought came, like a full-blown rose. Flushing his brow.
When he reached the gesticulating group, he was calm and business- like. He had a constructive policy to suggest.
"I say," he said. "I've got an idea!"
"Go away!" said Mr. Brewster. "This is bad enough without you butting in."
Archie quelled him with a gesture.
"Leave us," he said. "We would be alone. I want to have a little business-talk with Mr. Gossett." He turned to the movie-magnate, who was gradually emerging from the fruit-salad rather after the manner of a stout Venus rising from the sea. "Can you spare me a moment of your valuable time?"
"I'll have him arrested!"
"Don't you do it, laddie. Listen!"
"The man's mad. Throwing pies!"
Archie attached himself to his coat-button.
"Be calm, laddie. Calm and reasonable!"
For the first time Mr. Gossett seemed to become aware that what he had been looking on as a vague annoyance was really an individual.
"Who the devil are you?"
Archie drew himself up with dignity.
"I am this gentleman's representative," he replied, indicating the Sausage Chappie with a motion of the hand. "His jolly old personal representative. I act for him. And on his behalf I have a pretty ripe proposition to lay before you. Reflect, dear old bean," he proceeded earnestly. "Are you going to let this chance slip? The opportunity of a lifetime which will not occur again. By Jove, you ought to rise up and embrace this bird. You ought to clasp the chappie to your bosom! He has thrown pies at you, hasn't he? Very well. You are a movie-magnate. Your whole fortune is founded on chappies who throw pies. You probably scour the world for chappies who throw pies. Yet, when one comes right to you without any fuss or trouble and demonstrates before your very eyes the fact that he is without a peer as a pie-propeller, you get the wind up and talk about having him arrested. Consider! (There's a bit of cherry just behind your left ear.) Be sensible. Why let your personal feeling stand in the way of doing yourself a bit of good? Give this chappie a job and give it him quick, or we go elsewhere. Did you ever see Fatty Arbuckle handle pastry with a surer touch? Has Charlie Chaplin got this fellow's speed and control. Absolutely not. I tell you, old friend, you're in danger of throwing away a good thing!"
He paused. The Sausage Chappie beamed.
"I've aways wanted to go into the movies," he said. "I was an actor before the war. Just remembered."
Mr. Brewster attempted to speak. Archie waved him down.
"How many times have I got to tell you not to butt in?" he said, severely.
Mr. Gossett's militant demeanour had become a trifle modified during Archie's harangue. First and foremost a man of business, Mr. Gossett was not insensible to the arguments which had been put forward. He brushed a slice of orange from the back of his neck, and mused awhile.
"How do I know this fellow would screen well?" he said, at length.
"Screen well!" cried Archie. "Of course he'll screen well. Look at his face. I ask you! The map! I call your attention to it." He turned apologetically to the Sausage Chappie. "Awfully sorry, old lad, for dwelling on this, but it's business, you know." He turned to Mr. Gossett. "Did you ever see a face like that? Of course not. Why should I, as this gentleman's personal representative, let a face like that go to waste? There's a fortune in it. By Jove, I'll give you two minutes to think the thing over, and, if you don't talk business then, I'll jolly well take my man straight round to Mack Sennett or someone. We don't have to ask for jobs. We consider offers."
There was a silence. And then the clear voice of the child in the sailor suit made itself heard again.
"Mummie!"
"Yes, darling?"
"Is the man with the funny face going to throw any more pies?"
"No, darling."
The child uttered a scream of disappointed fury.
"I want the funny man to throw some more pies! I want the funny man to throw some more pies!"
A look almost of awe came into Mr. Gossett's face. He had heard the voice of the Public. He had felt the beating of the Public's pulse.
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," he said, picking a piece of banana off his right eyebrow, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. Come round to my office!"
CHAPTER XXI
THE GROWING BOY
The lobby of the Cosmopolis Hotel was a favourite stamping-ground of Mr. Daniel Brewster, its proprietor. He liked to wander about there, keeping a paternal eye on things, rather in the manner of the Jolly Innkeeper (hereinafter to be referred to as Mine Host) of the old- fashioned novel. Customers who, hurrying in to dinner, tripped over Mr. Brewster, were apt to mistake him for the hotel detective--for his eye was keen and his aspect a trifle austere--but, nevertheless, he was being as jolly an innkeeper as he knew how. His presence in the lobby supplied a personal touch to the Cosmopolis which other New York hotels lacked, and it undeniably made the girl at the book- stall extraordinarily civil to her clients, which was all to the good.
Most of the time Mr. Brewster stood in one spot and just looked thoughtful; but now and again he would wander to the marble slab behind which he kept the desk-clerk and run his eye over the register, to see who had booked rooms--like a child examining the stocking on Christmas morning to ascertain what Santa Claus had brought him.
As a rule, Mr. Brewster concluded this performance by shoving the book back across the marble slab and resuming his meditations. But one night a week or two after the Sausage Chappie's sudden restoration to the normal, he varied this procedure by starting rather violently, turning purple, and uttering an exclamation which was manifestly an exclamation of chagrin. He turned abruptly and cannoned into Archie, who, in company with Lucille, happened to be crossing the lobby at the moment on his way to dine in their suite.
Mr. Brewster apologised gruffly; then, recognising his victim, seemed to regret having done so.
"Oh, it's you! Why can't you look where you're going?" he demanded. He had suffered much from his son-in-law.