Page:Bedford-Jones--The Mardi Gras Mystery.djvu/125

 'Cajun? Have I not eyes in my head? If you wish to start an argument, say that the check is for a hundred dollars. Then, by heaven, I will argue something with you!"

"You are Ben Chacherre, eh? Does any one here know you?"

Chacherre exploded in a violent oath. "Dolt that you are, do I have to be known when the check is endorsed under my signature? Who taught you business, monkey?"

"True," answered the teller, sulkily. "Yet the amount"

"Oh, bah!" Chacherre snapped his fingers. "Go and telephone Jachin Fell, you old woman! Go and tell him you do not know his signature—well, who are you looking at? Am I a telephone, then? You are not hired to look but to act! Get about it."

The enraged and scandalized teller beckoned a confrere. Jachin Fell was telephoned. Presumably his response was reassuring, for Chacherre was presently handed a thousand dollars in small bills, as he requested. He insisted upon counting over the money at the window with insolent assiduity, flung a final compliment at the teller, and swaggered across