“Screen well!” cried Archie.  “Of course he’ll screen well.  Look at his face.  I ask you!  The map!  I call your attention to it.”  He turned apologetically to the Sausage Chappie.  “Awfully sorry, old lad, for dwelling on this, but it’s business, you know.”  He turned to Mr. Gossett.  “Did you ever see a face like that?  Of course not.  Why should I, as this gentleman’s personal representative, let a face like that go to waste?  There’s a fortune in it.  By Jove, I’ll give you two minutes to think the thing over, and, if you don’t talk business then, I’ll jolly well take my man straight round to Mack Sennett or someone.  We don’t have to ask for jobs.  We consider offers.”

There was a silence.  And then the clear voice of the child in the sailor suit made itself heard again.

“Mummie!”

“Yes, darling?”

“Is the man with the funny face going to throw any more pies?”

“No, darling.”

The child uttered a scream of disappointed fury.

“I want the funny man to throw some more pies!  I want the funny man to throw some more pies!”

A look almost of awe came into Mr. Gossett’s face.  He had heard the voice of the Public.  He had felt the beating of the Public’s pulse.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” he said, picking a piece of banana off his right eyebrow, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.  Come round to my office!”

CHAPTER XXI

THE GROWING BOY

The lobby of the Cosmopolis Hotel was a favourite stamping-ground of Mr. Daniel Brewster, its proprietor.  He liked to wander about there, keeping a paternal eye on things, rather in the manner of the Jolly Innkeeper (hereinafter to be referred to as Mine Host) of the old-fashioned novel.  Customers who, hurrying in to dinner, tripped over Mr. Brewster, were apt to mistake him for the hotel detective—­for his eye was keen and his aspect a trifle austere—­but, nevertheless, he was being as jolly an innkeeper as he knew how.  His presence in the lobby supplied a personal touch to the Cosmopolis which other New York hotels lacked, and it undeniably made the girl at the book-stall extraordinarily civil to her clients, which was all to the good.

Most of the time Mr. Brewster stood in one spot and just looked thoughtful; but now and again he would wander to the marble slab behind which he kept the desk-clerk and run his eye over the register, to see who had booked rooms—­like a child examining the stocking on Christmas morning to ascertain what Santa Claus had brought him.

As a rule, Mr. Brewster concluded this performance by shoving the book back across the marble slab and resuming his meditations.  But one night a week or two after the Sausage Chappie’s sudden restoration to the normal, he varied this procedure by starting rather violently, turning purple, and uttering an exclamation which was manifestly an exclamation of chagrin.  He turned abruptly and cannoned into Archie, who, in company with Lucille, happened to be crossing the lobby at the moment on his way to dine in their suite.