Mr. Mitty picked up a copy of the Daily News. There was a small headline in the upper right-hand corner: “Hemingway at Stork Club: No fotos, please!”
“Put that down,” his wife said. “You shouldn’t read such publications, particularly in public. Have you got everything?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Mitty.
They passed through the revolving door in the hotel, Mrs. Mitty first. Mr. Mitty followed, stumbling in his effort to keep pace with rapidly revolving quarter circle that confined him.
The gleaming doors of the Stork Club parted and all heads turned as Walter Mitty entered, with Miss Katherine Hepburn on his arm, the subdued rich crimson of her gown contrasting sharply with the assertive masculine black of his faultless eveningwear. All heads turned, but away from the door rather than towards it, towards Table No. 1, where two men stood and glowered at one another like angered bulls.
“Perhaps we should settle this outside,” said Ernest Hemingway, stepping out from behind the table and into the aisle.
“We’ll settle it here and now,” said the other man, stepping towards Hemingway.
The second man was three inches taller and perhaps ten years younger than Hemingway, but the novelist didn’t hesitate.
“Very well,” he said.
At the last second, a third figure stepped between the two.
“Just a minute,” said Walter Mitty.
“Who the hell are you?” snapped the younger man.
“This isn’t your fight, Mitty,” growled Hemingway.
“It isn’t anyone’s,” said Mitty. “Not here, not now.”
Hemingway fixed his eyes fiercely on Mitty.
“This is not the act of a gentleman,” he said, coldly.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Mitty, almost gently, though his eyes matched Hemingway’s steely gaze. “You see, I gave Miss Hepburn’s father my word that I wouldn’t lead her into the company of ruffians.”
Hemingway hesitated.
“This puppy needs a thrashing,” he said, nodding at his adversary. Mitty recognized the man, George Kirby, an apprentice gossip columnist at the Journal-American.
“Not here,” said Mitty. “He doesn’t deserve the ink his boss would love to give him.”
Hemingway grinned.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“I believe I am.”
Mitty turned to Kirby.
“I think it’s past your bedtime,” he said.
It was Kirby’s turn to encounter Mitty’s ice-blue, unblinking gaze. Their eyes were at a level. Kirby tried to stare back, but, unconsciously, his lips began to tremble. All those stories he’d heard about Mitty at Princeton, he realized—they were all true.
“All right,” he said. “I guess we both got carried away.”
“Don’t tell it that way,” snapped Hemingway. “Tell it right or don’t tell it at all.”
“All right, no story,” said Kirby, now in full retreat.
“Good,” said Mitty, evenly, watching Kirby until he left.
The room, which had been frozen in silence since Mitty arrived, suddenly burst forth with a thousand tongues. The maître d’, who had been earnestly imitating a statue through the whole affair, stepped forth to direct Mitty and Miss Hepburn to their table.
“A cognac, Mitty,” Hemingway said. “I owe you a cognac.”
“I’ll keep you to it,” Mitty said, as he departed.
As the couple walked through the room a fierce, scarcely controlled babble of voices surged around them. “Stepped right between them!” “Some nerve!” Over and over, one could hear the whispered one-word refrain: “Mitty” “Mitty” Mitty”.
“Everyone’s talking about you, Walter,” drawled Miss Hepburn, squeezing his arm.
“That’s because I’m with you,” he replied, squeezing hers in return.
“What are you doing?” demanded Mrs. Mitty. “Let go of me!”
