The thug before the door, that fellow though a stranger is no stranger, Omar at the Poppy would have known him at first glance, and pounded him at second: for just a moment they size up one another, man to man, Rupert unimpressed by the doughy bulk that speaks of sidewalk living, Costello bristling at the older man’s aplomb. The secretary, in his flurry of newspapers, glances furtively at the notorious Mr. Bok as he enters the office of Martin Eig, who rises to acknowledge him, though not to shake his hand, calling for tea— “If you drink such, that is?” “I do. I like tea.” “Somehow,” with a kind of smile, “I had not expected that you would. Perhaps because of your bent.“ “And that is?” Rupert says, with a mental sigh; he is growing very weary of these kind of feints and passes, like the second, fugitive puppet, and the bumptious constables, and the clerk at the Office of Literature and Entertainments refusing his payment of the license renewal, shaking his balding head—It can’t be done, sir, it’s marked that way in your file.
