"Suh, you outrage us," said Colonel Lee. "Why, for that amount I can have the finest meal in the restaurants of Memphis, the best cooking in the golden southland."
"Nae doot—a meal o' poisonous stairches and the flesh o' God's creatures. My meals will neither drive ye into sin nor fill you vitals wi' reeking venom, and 'tis but logic ye should pay the dooble. There'll be an extra five dollars, too, for mailing your guns after ye. Dinna think I'd be so rash as let ye gae wi' them while ye're in so contrairy a mind. Come on noo, hand it ower, or my bairns and I will collect by our ain ways."
The Colonel silently produced a wallet and handed over the required amount.
"Thank you, suh," he said to Finch, as they were beyond the door. "Your conversation with that low-born rascal kept it from being a good deal worse. He forgot the nuts."
As they reached the car, Hyperion Weems began to turn the crank that opened the rifle-compartment.
"Don't do that!" said Colonel Lee, sharply.
"Why, boss," said Weems, "hain't we going back there to see how red they are inside?"
"No suh, we are not. Drive on, Janus."
"At least we oughta challenge 'em to a square fight. That big one with the scar—"
"C'm down, suh. If I hear one more word out of you-all, I'll turn you in to the authorities myself, for violation of the code. That man, suh, is an original acting within his own rights on his home ground." Then he added reflectively: "And besides, maybe we could find a use for him."
"I got a use for him a'ready," said Impy, with a grin. "I know a few people back in Memphis that are going to hear about MacPherson and his wonderful steak-house. Heh, heh."
Nine:
The cars swept round a curve and the crest of Chickasaw Bluffs came in sight, covered with a park whose impressiveness depreciated the rest of Memphis. A gateway carried them into a winding drive, with alternate wide vistas and clumps of close-set trees, amid which low concrete structures gleamed whitely, showing round corners in a style of architecture with which Finch felt vaguely that he ought to be familiar. Negroes at work looked up, then halted to salute as the cavalcade went past.
The run through this parkland was a good five minutes long. They emerged from it to roll through wide green lawns toward a stone structure that might have been that famous Crusaders' castle of Krak des Chevaliers, except that it was very much larger. A gleam from one of the towers caught Finch's eye—light on metal. He leaned for a better look and perceived that it was a highly functional gun-turret, with a piece of at least three-inch calibre; and his memory, thus jogged, recalled the origin of the white structures. They were machine-gun nests.
Janus in the front seat leaned over to push a control; a set of chimes on the lavender machine struck up "Hail, the Conquering Hero Comes", and both cars slid to a stop, with gaudily-clad servants swarming round to open doors and snatch at baggage. The porte-cochere before which they had stopped was abnormally high, with a set of stone steps rising to iron-bound oaken doors over which a huge carved Pegasus pranced in stone. As Colonel Richard Fitzhugh Lee strode to the foot of the steps, the doors flung open to reveal a woman in a trailing medieval-type gown. Lee halted and swept off his Congressman's hat with a gesture so grandiose it would have over-balanced a lesser man, and the woman burst into song:
"Ritorna vincitor! E dal mio labbro usci 1'empia parola! Vincitor del pardre mio—di lui che impugna Farmi per me—"
Aïda. The Colonel ascended the steps with dramatic slowness, timing it nicely to arrive just as she finished the aria on a magnificently sustained high note. He kissed her hand, and as the others came up behind him, inquired: "How has you-all been, honey chile?"
"I have been s-splendid, my lover. Like a horse—the wild horse of the steppes, ha, ha!" The last two notes were not a laugh, but musical tones and the woman smote herself on the sternum to illustrate the splendor of the wild horse of the steppes. "The expedition—it was a success, no?"
"We convinced those weasling scoundrels that it is dangerous to interfere with the development of Southern lit'rature. Cleanthus Odum is destroyed, with three of his hireling minions, and I think another visit will persuade the Bummingham grocers to sell our books, instead of those from the carpetbagging Arcadians. Standwood is no more, alas! The brave, the true." The Colonel bowed his head for a moment, then turned to where Finch stood gaping:
"We have gained a recruit 'ough. Miss Sonia Kirsch, permit me to present Mr. Finch. Miss Kirsch is rightly known as the Nightingale of Old Memphis. Mr. Finch is a talker; a table conversationalist who will illumine our festive board. A true original—actually wandering crosscountry by hisself when we discovered him."
Sonia extended a hand. "You shall make conversation to me. I lof those sayings—but no pun." She had hair on the borderline between red and brown and a figure that ran to luscious curves, which she did not seem to mind exhibiting. Some one had done a good Duco job on her face.
Finch did his best, mind working desperately: "I'm afraid there isn't much I could say after hearing you sing. After all, what would one expect Ulysses to say to a siren he met socially?"
The Colonel beamed, stroking his goatee, and his nightingale clapped her hands. "But you arrre wo-o-onderful!" she cried, rolling her eyes slightly. "And so adventure looking, like the Chevalier de Seingault. We mus' be friends, no?"
"Madame," said Finch, "I assure you that beneath this Paul Bunyan costume beats the heart of one like Paul the Apostle—of all men most miserable, because that which I would do, I cannot do." He gave her a glance which he hoped she would find sufficiently languishing, and the Colonel rescued him with the announcement that dinner was at seven-thirty.
"The hospitality of Pegasus Hall, suh, is yours to command. Gumfoot! Attend this gentleman; show him to one of the member-rooms; provide him with a tall glass of nectar and a dinner outfit." He extended an arm to the voluptuous Sonia.
Gumfoot detached himself from the first shadows of coming twilight-^-an ancient, almost paralytic negro, with a fringe of white hair around his skull. He led the way upstairs to a room the size of a small cathedral, around which he puttered, arranging doilies and moving ashtrays half an inch, clucking gently over his own activity. After a moment Finch said: "Where can I get a bath around here, Gumfoot? I need one."
The old man turned, chuckling. "Reckon de nearest place is de Mississipp' in puhson, suh. Hot watah system in dis house done blowed up dis mornin'."
"Oh. Well, what about that drink and those dinner-clothes?"
"One de common boys bring dem. Ah's a fambly retainah."
"What does a family retrainer do?"
"Ah give my boss good advice, an' pick out his clo's for him, an' steal his liquor so he'll have somebody to kick roun' when he feels mean. An' ah carry messages to de gals; ah worked for Mist' Randy till he done got shooted for messin' roun' Miss Sonia."
The family retainer chuckled again, and it occurred to Finch, with a slight contraction of the valvular muscles, that he could easily overplay his hand with the Nightingale of Memphis. She had compared him to the Chevalier de Seingault, whose family name was Casanova, and Colonel Lee did not behave Mice a man who would accept rivalry in the spirit of complacent understanding displayed by Orange William Banker.
A tap at the door was the boy with the clothes and a perfectly genuine mint julep, past which Gumfoot bowed himself out. Before giving himself to the task of dressing Finch sat down to sip and take stock. If he were still in the land of dream or nightmare—the coolness in his hand and the pleasant sensation along his gullet seemed to demonstrate that he was not—it was at least an improvement on the preceding manifestation. Certainly there would be no crime of Advertising here. This was a dream of a paradise of uninhibited individualism, even beyond what he had hoped for when he went to sleep on the carnelian cube, and it was pleasant. There were—he frowned and sipped his julep—certain aspects not altogether pleasant, a good deal of gun-play, for example. Could one die in a dream? One could probably die without coming out of it, if it reflected some somatic stimulus. No matter; he had always wanted to adventure, and here he was. He felt suddenly free and light, a boy released from school. If there were cocktails on top of the julep he ought to do all right with his unexpected profession on making bright remarks.