Bean reëntered with the certificates. The old gentleman glanced angrily over them.
"Bean!" he exclaimed humorously. "Vegetable after all; not a fish! Funny name that! Bunker Bean! Boston, by gad! Not bad that, I say! Come, come, come! Want par, of course—all do! There y'are, boy!"
He blotted the check, tore it from the book and waved it toward Bean as he turned to the director of the cigarette.
"About that proposition before us to-day, Mr. Chairman" but Bean had gone. Observing this, the old gentleman looked about him.
"Shrimp!" he said contemptuously, with the convinced air of an expert in marine biology.
Bean, outside, once more addressed himself to typewriting. He wondered if he should be seized with a toothache or a fainting spell. Toothache was good, but perhaps Bulger had used that too often. Still Tully would "fall" for a toothache. It gave him a chance to say that if people would only go to a dentist once every three months Then he remembered that Tully was inside. He wouldn't make any excuse at all.
"Going out a few minutes," he explained to old Metezger as he swiftly changed from his office coat and adjusted the new straw hat.
Bulger glanced up from his machine, winked at him and shaped a word with his able mouth. An adept in lip-reading could have seen it to be "Chubbins." Bean in response leered confession at him.
