The equally large man who owned the hand said, in a mild and cultured voice, “Is this gentleman disturbing you, Sam?”
“Not so far,” the little man conceded. “He might want to, though, so don’t go away.”
Morey wrenched his shoulder away. “Don’t think you can strong-arm me. I’m taking you to the police.”
Sam shook his head unbelievingly. “You mean you’re going to call the law in on this?”
“I certainly am!”
Sam sighed regretfully. “What do you think of that, Walter? Treating his wife like that. Such a nice lady, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Morey demanded, stung on a peculiarly sensitive spot.
“I’m talking about your wife,” Sam explained. “Of course, I’m not married myself. But it seems to me that if I was, I wouldn’t call the police when my wife was engaged in some kind of criminal activity or other. No, sir, I’d try to settle it myself. Tell you what,” he advised, “why don’t you talk this over with her? Make her see the error of—”
“Wait a minute,” Morey interrupted. “You mean you’d involve my wife in this thing?”
The man spread his hands helplessly. “It’s not me that would involve her, Buster,” he said. “She already involved her own self. It takes two to make a crime, you know. I sell, maybe; I won’t deny it. But after all, I can’t sell unless somebody buys, can I?”
Morey stared at him glumly. He glanced in quick speculation at the large-sized Walter; but Walter was just as big as he’d remembered, so that took care of that. Violence was out; the police were out; that left no really attractive way of capitalizing on the good luck of running into the man again.
Sam said, “Well, I’m glad to see that’s off your mind. Now, returning to my original question, Mac, how would you like a good time? You look like a smart fellow to me; you look like you’d be kind of interested in a place I happen to know of down the block.”
Morey said bitterly, “So you’re a dive-steerer, too. A real talented man.”
“I admit it,” Sam agreed. “Stamp business is slow at night, in my experience. People have their minds more on a good time. And, believe me, a good time is what I can show ’em. Take this place I’m talking about, Uncle Piggotty’s is the name of it, it’s what I would call an unusual kind of place. Wouldn’t you say so, Walter?”
“Oh, I agree with you entirely,” Walter rumbled.
But Morey was hardly listening. He said, “Uncle Piggotty’s, you say?”
“That’s right,” said Sam.
Morey frowned for a moment, digesting an idea. Uncle Piggotty’s sounded like the place Howland had been talking about back at the plant; it might be interesting, at that.
While he was making up his mind, Sam slipped an arm through his on one side and Walter amiably wrapped a big hand around the other. Morey found himself walking.
“You’ll like it,” Sam promised comfortably. “No hard feelings about this morning, sport? Of course not. Once you get a look at Piggotty’s, you’ll get over your mad, anyhow. It’s something special. I swear, on what they pay me for bringing in customers, I wouldn’t do it unless I believed in it.”
“Dance, Jack?” the hostess yelled over the noise at the bar. She stepped back, lifted her flounced skirts to ankle height and executed a tricky nine-step.
“My name is Morey,” Morey yelled back. “And I don’t want to dance, thanks.”
The hostess shrugged, frowned meaningfully at Sam and danced away.
Sam flagged the bartender. “First round’s on us,” he explained to Morey. “Then we won’t bother you any more. Unless you want us to, of course. Like the place?” Morey hesitated, but Sam didn’t wait. “Fine place,” he yelled, and picked up the drink the bartender left him. “See you around.”
He and the big man were gone. Morey stared after them uncertainly, then gave it up. He was here, anyhow; might as well at least have a drink. He ordered and looked around.
Uncle Piggotty’s was a third-rate dive disguised to look, in parts of it at least, like one of the exclusive upper-class country clubs. The bar, for instance, was treated to resemble the clean lines of nailed wood; but underneath the surface treatment, Morey could detect the intricate laminations of plyplastic. What at first glance appeared to be burlap hangings were in actuality elaborately textured synthetics. And all through the bar the motif was carried out.
A floor show of sorts was going on, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to it. Morey, straining briefly to hear the master of ceremonies, gathered that the unit was on a more than mildly vulgar level. There was a dispirited string of chorus beauties in long ruffled pantaloons and diaphanous tops; one of them, Morey was almost sure, was the hostess who had talked to him just a few moments before.
Next to him a man was declaiming to a middle-aged woman:
Smote I the monstrous rock, yahoot Smote I the turgid tube, Bully Boy! Smote I the cankered hill—
“Why, Morey!” he interrupted himself. “What are you doing here?”