If he had wanted silence he obtained it. A sort of awe descended upon the half-dozen women marketing and upon the gray-haired ancient who in cap and apron was slicing chicken.
Anthony pulled a batch of papers from his flapping briefcase and waved them cheerfully.
"Buy a bon'," he suggested, "good as liberty bon'!" The phrase pleased him and he elaborated upon it. "Better'n liberty bon'. Every one these bon's worth _two_ liberty bon's." His mind made a hiatus and skipped to his peroration, which he delivered with appropriate gestures, these being somewhat marred by the necessity of clinging to the counter with one or both hands.
"Now see here. You taken up my time. I don't want know why you won't buy. I just want you say why. Want you say how many!"
At this point they should have approached him with check-books and fountain pens in hand. Realizing that they must have missed a cue Anthony, with the instincts of an actor, went back and repeated his finale.
"Now see here! You taken up my time. You followed prop'sition. You agreed 'th reasonin'? Now, all I want from you is, how many lib'ty bon's?"
"See here!" broke in a new voice. A portly man whose face was adorned with symmetrical scrolls of yellow hair had come out of a glass cage in the rear of the store and was bearing down upon Anthony. "See here, you!"
"How many?" repeated the salesman sternly. "You taken up my time--"
"Hey, you!" cried the proprietor, "I'll have you taken up by the police."
"You mos' cert'nly won't!" returned Anthony with fine defiance. "All I want know is how many."
From here and there in the store went up little clouds of comment and expostulation.
"How terrible!"
"He's a raving maniac."
"He's disgracefully drunk."
The proprietor grasped Anthony's arm sharply.
"Get out, or I'll call a policeman."
Some relics of rationality moved Anthony to nod and replace his bonds clumsily in the case.
"How many?" he reiterated doubtfully.
"The whole force if necessary!" thundered his adversary, his yellow mustache trembling fiercely.
"Sell 'em all a bon'."
With this Anthony turned, bowed gravely to his late auditors, and wabbled from the store. He found a taxicab at the corner and rode home to the apartment. There he fell sound asleep on the sofa, and so Gloria found him, his breath filling the air with an unpleasant pungency, his hand still clutching his open brief case.