Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET
59
clown-like of the hotels. But my art—M’sieu’, I
play upon the silver bugle.”
He paused, looking at us not at all like a cook
seeking a situation, but like the great musician he
believed himself. I think all three of us kept grave
faces. He nodded again.
“The silver bugle. Messieurs. Music—it is my art,
my passion, my life. In every moment that is mine
I retreat to my room and seek to find the sum of
beauty in the long sweetness of some single note. So
I did at the Availaire, and they listened, astounded
and respectful, saying nothing. . . . Till the coming
of the new manager.”
“And what did he do ?” inquired Marrot.
“M’sieu’, he burst into my room the second day
he came, saying that I raised a hideous noise like to
crack the walls. When I understood I laid aside my
little bugle and answered that perhaps his head would
achieve the result more quickly. Then I took him
by the ears, Messieurs, and beat his head against the
wall, and beat it upon the floor, and might have
beaten in his empty skull but for the fact that his
screams brought him rescuers. Then I left the
Avallaire, I and my little bugle.”
He stopped. I looked at Marrot. Marrot, lighting
a cigarette, looked at Huebsch. The great Jew, it
was plain, was slowly and justly working out the
matter in all its details.
“Now, Georgios, we want a cook,” he said at
last, carefully, “and Colonel Saloney here recom¬
mends you. We’ll pay you a decent wage, but you