"Cold! Icie! Freezum! Br-r-r! Savvy?"
Inspiration came to the waiter; a smile irradiated his
countenance, and with a murmured apology for his stupidity he
hurried away.
O'Reilly stepped over to the stranger's table and introduced
himself. "The hotel-keeper in Neuvitas told me I'd find you here,"
he said. "Your name is--"
"Branch; Leslie Branch. So Carbajal said you'd find me here, eh?
Oh, the greasy little liar. He didn't believe it. He thought his
cooking would have killed me, long ago, and it nearly did." This
time Mr. Branch's bony frame underwent a genuine shudder and his
face was convulsed with loathing. "Did you try his butter? 'Made
in Denmark' during the early Victorian period. I hate antiques--
can't eat anything oily. Carbajal's in the Secret Service. Nice
fat little spy."
"So I suspected."
Mr. Branch's beverage appeared at this moment. With a flourish the
waiter placed a small glass and a bottle of dark liquid before
him. Branch stared at it, then rolled a fiercely smoldering eye
upward.
"What's that?" he inquired.
O'Reilly read the label. "It's bitters," said he.
"BITTERS! And I asked for 'yellow'--a glass of agwa with yellow."
Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed
toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to
describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker
colored this innocuous expletive.
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