that pretty fast parties took place in this caravansary and that the terpsichorean exertions of the talent waxed revelatory after midnight. As no one had been arrested for improper expositions of muscular facility, the place had yet to draw a college following.
The play was a harmless affair, adapted from the Russian and therefore considered profoundly entertaining. Dorothy found little amusing in it, although Arnold insisted that there was a searing irony back of it. Who was seared, he did not explain. But the final scene, in which an old man, deserted by his family, cheated by his supposed friends and impoverished by his faith in mankind, declared that never had he been so happy, was, Arnold set forth, a master stroke. Dorothy thanked him for a good time.
The Battle Royale was in the Fifties, near Broadway. A huge green and red sign of flickering lights almost obscured the little doorway which led into the building. There was a wide, shallow lobby, attended by negroes in Hawaiian costumes—Hawaiian in the best Broadway tradition. The headwaiter was not a negro. Something had to be done to keep the Southern trade.
It was almost midnight when Dorothy and Arnold entered the dining-room, which had a little space cleared in the centre for dancing. A balcony contained a negro jazz band. The tables were crowded closely upon each other, and the twenty-odd dancing couples had little room for their gyrations; not that they needed it for their school of dancing.
Arnold ordered ices and sandwiches and seemed impervious to the waiter’s suggestion that something stronger than coffee might be had if the gentleman so desired.
“You can’t tell what kind of stuff they have here,” he told Dorothy. “And anyhow, I don’t drink—only once in
[61]
