Lon says "Easy come, easy go!" and moves over to the next table again to
help out with the silver bucket of champagne he's ordered, taking Jeff
Tuttle with him to present to his old friends that he's known for all of
twenty minutes. The New Yorker is now more suspicious then ever of Ben;
his wan beauty is marred by a cynical smile and his hair has come
unglued in a couple of places. Ben is more sensitive than ever to these
suspicions of his new pal so he calls on Jake Berger to match his watch
against the four. Jake takes out his split-second repeater and him and
Ben match coins and this time Ben is lucky enough to lose, thereby
showing his dear old New Yorker that he ain't a crook after all. But the
New Yorker still looks very shrewd and robbed and begins to gulp the
champagne in a greedy manner. You can hear him calling Jake a
confederate. Jake sees it plain enough, that the lad thinks he's been
high-graded, so he calls over our waiter and crowds all five watches
onto him. "Take these home to the little ones," says Jake, and dismisses
the matter from his mind by putting a wine glass up to his ear and
listening into it with a rapt expression that shows he's hearing the
roar of the ocean up on Alaska's rockbound coast.
Pages:
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478