A man at the next table, well known as the Pippin, young, flashily
dressed, his almost effeminate features giving an added touch of
viciousness, through incongruity, to his general appearance, twisted
his head around and grinned with malicious derision.
Jimmie Dale's fingers searched hungrily now through first one and then
another of his ragged pockets, and finally extricated a dime and a
nickel. With these he tapped insistently on the table, until an
attendant answered the summons and supplied him with another drink.
He sat back then for a time; now eyeing the liquor, as though greedy
for its taste, yet greedy, too, to prolong the anticipation, since from
his actions there was apparently no means of further replenishing the
supply; now glancing around the smoke-laden room where, on the polished
section of the floor in the centre, a score of laughing, shrieking
couples whirled and pranced in the unrestrained throes of the
underworld's latest dance; now permitting his eyes to rest with a
sudden scowl on the man at the next table. He had no concern with the
Pippin--nor had the Pippin any concern with him. The man, as he imbibed
a number of drinks, simply seemed to find a certain: malevolent
amusement in a contemptuous appraisal of his, Jimmie Dale's, person;
but the other, in spite of the new, glad exhilaration Jimmie Dale was
experiencing, annoyed Jimmie Dale--the blatant expanse of pink shirt
cuff, for instance, in order to display the Pippin's diamond-snake
links, famous from One end of the underworld to the other, was
eminently typical of the man.
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