And when he had gone on into the restaurant itself, slipping his
modest person inconspicuously into a chair at the nearest unoccupied
table, the testimony of his other senses as to the character of his
company served to confirm this impression.
"It's no use," he sighed: "I'm too old a dog.... Be it ever so
typical, there's _no_ place like one's own hash-foundry." ...
This room was broad and deep, and boasted, at its far end, a miniature
stage supporting the orchestra and, temporarily, the gyrations of a
lady in a vivacious scarlet costume--mistress of the shopworn
contralto--who was "vamping with the feet" the interval between two
verses of her ballad.
The main floor was strewn with tables round which sat a motley
gathering of gangsters, fools, pretty iniquities and others by no
stretch of the imagination to be termed pretty, confidence men,
gambling touts, and the sprinkling of drunkards--plain, common,
transient, periodical, suburban, habitual, and unconscious--for and by
whom the place was, and is, maintained. In and out among these
circulated several able-bodied waiters with soiled shirt-bosoms, iron
jaws and, not infrequently, cauliflower ears.
Spying out P. Sybarite, one of these bore down upon him with an air of
the most flattering camaraderie.
It was true that the little man, in a dark coat and hat alike too
large for him, with his shabby shoes and trousers and apologetic
demeanour, promised no very profitable plucking; but the rule of Dutch
House is to neglect none, however lowly.
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