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Everything about the place, from the macaroni of the lunch, and the Chianti in its straw-covered, heavy-paunched bottle, to the musical, incorrect Spanish of the hotel-proprietors fleshy, massive men with huge mustaches in Victor Emmanuel style spoke of flight, of delightful seclusion in that land so glowingly described by Leonora.

Sweat stood out upon the forehead of the heavy-paunched proprietor as with a flabby-faced grin he set out the bottle. But the Texan caught the snake-like flash of the eyes with which the man signalled to the croupier across the room. Gun in hand, he whirled: "No, you don't, Toney!" An ugly blue-black automatic dropped to the floor and the croupier's hands flew ceilingward.

The Hindu bazaars overflowed into the street with their exotic, polychrome rarities: clothes embroidered with terror-inspiring divinities and chimerical animals; carpets in which the lotus-flower was adapted to the strangest designs; kimonos of delicate, indefinable tints; porcelain jars with monsters that belched fire; amber-colored shawls, as delicate as woven sighs; and in the small windows that had been converted into display cases, all the trinkets of the extreme Orient, in silver, ivory or ebony; black elephants with white tusks, heavy-paunched Buddhas, filigree jewels, mysterious amulets, daggers engraved from hilt to point.

On the shelves and on the floor, separated according to class and size, were flasks, bottles, jars, canisters, a veritable army of glass and porcelain pots; the ranks were broken by those huge, green, dropsical pharmacy bottles, and several heavy-paunched demi-johns; then came half-gallon bottles, tall and dark; straw-covered vases; this was followed by the section devoted to medicinal waters, the most varied and numerous of all, for it included Seltzer-water siphons, oxygenized-water siphons, bottles of gaseous water, Vichy, Mondariz, Carabana; after this came the small fry, the perfume phials, the pots, the cold-cream jars, the cosmetic receptacles.