CHAPTER II
OVER THE TOP!
It was only about a quarter of an hour before we
reached “The Dog’’; but the time passed heavily.
I had been annexed by the white maggot. Her presence
made me feel as if I were already a corpse. It was the
limit.
But I think the ordeal served to bring up in my
mind some inkling of the true nature of my feeling for
Lou.
The Smoking Dog, now ingloriously extinct, was a
night club decorated by a horrible little cad who
spent his life pushing himself into art and literature.
The dancing room was a ridiculous, meaningless, gaudy,
bad imitation of Klimmt.
Damn it all, I may not be a great flyer, but I ama
fresh-air man. I detest these near-artists with their
poses and their humbug and their swank. I hate shams.
I found myself in a state of furious impatience before
five minutes had passed. Mrs. Webster and Lou had
not arrived. Ten minutes—twenty—I fell into a blind
rage, drank heavily of the vile liquor with which the
place was stinking, and flung myself with I don’t know
what woman into the dance.
A shrill-voiced Danish siren, the proprietress, was
screaming abuse at one of her professional entertainers
—some long, sordid, silly story of sexual jealousy, I
suppose. The band was deafening. The fine edge of
my sense was dulled. It was in a sort of hot nightmare
that I saw, through the smoke and the stink of the
club, the evil smile of Mrs. Webster.
Small as the woman was, she seemed to fill the door-
way. She preoccupied the attention in the same way
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