The first room which they entered when they left the winter-garden,
was as large as a small restaurant, panelled in cream colour, with
a marvellous ceiling. There were tables of various sizes laid for
supper, rows of champagne bottles in ice buckets, and servants
eagerly waiting for orders. Already a sprinkling of the guests
had found their way here. The two men crossed the floor to the
cocktail bar in the far corner, behind which a familiar face
grinned at them. It was Jimmy, the bartender from Soto's, who
stood there with a wonderful array of bottles on a walnut table.
"If it were not a perfectly fatuous question, I should ask what
you were doing here, Jimmy?" Francis remarked.
"I always come for Sir Timothy's big parties, sir," Jimmy
explained. "Your first visit, isn't it, sir?"
"My first," Francis assented.
"And mine," his companion echoed.
"What can I have the pleasure of making for you, sir?" the man
enquired.
"A difficult question," Francis admitted. "It is barely an hour
and a half since we finished diner. On the other hand, we are
certainly going to have some supper some time or other."
Jimmy nodded understandingly.
"Leave it to me, sir," he begged.
He served them with a foaming white concoction in tall glasses.
A genuine lime bobbed up and down in the liquid.
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