"Nice friend, you are, I'll say.
He told me about you."
Then she seized Gordon's arm, and together they made their way through the curious crowd, paid their check, and went out.
"You'll have to sit down," said the waiter to Peter after they had gone.
"What's 'at? Sit down?"
"Yes --or get out."
Peter turned to Dean.
"Come on," he suggested. "Let's beat up this waiter."
"All right."
They advanced toward him, their faces grown stern.
The waiter retreated.
Peter suddenly reached over to a plate on the table beside him and picking up a handful of hash tossed it into the air.
It descended as a languid parabola in snowflake effect on the heads of those near by.
"Hey!
Ease up!"
"Put him out!"
"Sit down, Peter!"
"Cut out that stuff!"
Peter laughed and bowed.
"Thank you for your kind applause, ladies and gents.
If some one will lend me some more hash and a tall hat we will go on with the act."
The bouncer bustled up.
"You've gotta get out!" he said to Peter.
"Hell, no!"
"He's my friend!" put in Dean indignantly.
A crowd of waiters were gathering. " Put him out!"
"Better go, Peter."
There was a short struggle and the two were edged and pushed toward the door.
"I got a hat and a coat here!" cried Peter.
"Well, go get 'em and be spry about it!"
The bouncer released his hold on Peter, who, adopting a ludicrous air of extreme cunning, rushed immediately around to the other table, where he burst into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose at the exasperated waiters.
"Think I just better wait a l'il' longer," he announced.
The chase began.
Four waiters were sent around one way and four another.
Dean caught hold of two of them by the coat, and another struggle took place before the pursuit of Peter could be resumed; he was finally pinioned after overturning a sugar-bowl and several cups of coffee.
A fresh argument ensued at the cashier's desk, where Peter attempted to buy another dish of hash to take with him and throw at policemen.
But the commotion upon his exit proper was dwarfed by another phenomenon which drew admiring glances and a prolonged involuntary " Oh-h-h!" from every person in the restaurant.
The great plate-glass front had turned to a deep creamy blue, the color of a Maxfield Parrish moonlight -- a blue that seemed to press close upon the pane as if to crowd its way into the restaurant.
Dawn had come up in Columbus Circle, magical, breathless dawn, silhouetting the great statue of the immortal Christopher, and mingling in a curious and uncanny manner with the fading yellow electric light inside.
X
Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker.
You will search for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the grocer's credit list.
Oblivion has swallowed them and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law.
Yet I have it upon the best authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own.
During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from.
Then they passed and were heard of no more.
They were already taking form dimly, when a taxi-cab with the top open breezed down Broadway in the faintest glimmer of May dawn.
In this car sat the souls of Mr. In and Mr. Out discussing with amazement the blue light that had so precipitately colored the sky behind the statue of Christopher Columbus, discussing with bewilderment the old, gray faces of the early risers which skimmed palely along the street like blown bits of paper on a gray lake.
They were agreed on all things, from the absurdity of the bouncer in Childs' to the absurdity of the business of life.
They were dizzy with the extreme maudlin happiness that the morning had awakened in their glowing souls.