The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [72]
“That’s right; rub it in!” exclaimed the disgruntled one. “Massage me with it! Jimmy, if I could take off my legs, I’d kick myself with them from here to Boston and never lose a stroke. And me wise!”
“But where’s the fire?” asked J. Rufus, bringing the end of his collar to place with a dexterous jerk.
“This lamb I came out to shear—rot him and burn him and scatter his ashes! Before I went dippy over two letter-heads and a nice round signature, I ordered an extra safety-deposit vault back home and came on to take his bank roll and house and lot, and make him a present of his clothes if he behaved. But not so! Not—so! Jimmy, this whole town blew right over from out of the middle of Missouri in the last cyclone. You’ve got to show everybody, and then turn it over and let ’em see the other side, and I haven’t met the man yet that you could separate from a dollar without chloroform and an ax. Let me tell you what to do with that hundred, J. Rufe. Just get on the train and give it to the conductor, and tell him to take you as far ay-way from here as the money will reach!”
Mr. Wallingford settled his cravat tastefully and smiled at himself in the glass.
“I like the place,” he observed. “They have tall buildings here, and I smell soft money. This town will listen to a legitimate business proposition. What?”
“Like the milk-stopper industry?” inquired Mr. Daw, grinning appreciatively. “How is your Boston corporation coming on, anyhow?”
“It has even quit holding the bag,” responded the other, “because there isn’t anything left of the bag. The last I saw of them, the thin and feeble stockholders were chasing themselves around in circles, so I faded away.”
“You’re a wonder,” complimented the black-haired man with genuine admiration. “You never take a chance, yet get away with everything in sight, and you never leave ’em an opening to put the funny clothes on you.”
“I deal in nothing but straight commercial propositions that are strictly within the pale of the law,” said J. Rufus without a wink; “and even at that they can’t say I took anything away from Boston.”
“Don’t blame Boston. You never cleaned up a cent less than five thousand a month while you were there, and if you spent it, that was your lookout.”
“I had to live.”
“So do the suckers,” sagely observed Mr. Daw, “but they manage it on four cents’ worth of prunes a day, and save up their money for good people. How is Mrs. Wallingford?”
“All others are base imitations,” boasted the large man, pausing to critically consider the flavor of his champagne. “Just now, Fanny’s in New York, eating up her diamonds. She was swallowing the last of the brooch when I left her, and this morning she was to begin on the necklace. That ought to last her quite some days, and by that time J. Rufus expects to be on earth again.”
A waiter came to the door with a menu card, and Mr. Wallingford ordered, to be ready to serve in three quarters of an hour, at a choice table near the music, a dinner for two that would gladden the heart of any tip-hunter.
“How soon are you going back to Boston, Blackie?”
“To-night!” snapped the other. “I was going to take a train that makes it in nineteen hours, but I found there is one that makes it in eighteen and a half, so I’m going to take that; and when I get back where the police are satisfied with half, I’m not going out after the emerald paper any more. I’m going to make them bring it to me. It’s always the best way. I never went after money yet that they didn’t ask me why I wanted it.”
The large man laughed with his eyes closed.
“Honestly, Blackie, you ought to go into legitimate business enterprises. That’s the only game. You can get anybody to buy stock when you make them print it themselves, if you’ll only bait up with some little staple article that people use and throw away every day, like ice-cream pails, or corks, or cigar bands, or—or—or carpet tacks.” Having sought about the room for this last illustration, Mr. Wallingford became suddenly inspired, and, arising, went over to the edge of the