Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford: A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business BuccaneerChester, George Randolph
General
Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford: A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer
Chester, George Randolph
Businessmen -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction
"Huh?" grunted J. Rufus, and immediately there followed another
succession of unintelligible sounds. Wallingford was snoring.
It was precisely twenty-four hours before Mr. Daw could convey this
important information to his friend and make him understand it, and it
was not until they had arrived in Jersey City that J. Rufus, still dull
from his nerve-racking experience, was normal enough to ask:
"Who's the lucky lady?"
"The Star of Morning and the Queen of Night," responded Blackie with
vast enthusiasm. "The one best bet of blazing Broadway. The sweetest
peach in the orchard of joy. The fairest blossom in Cupid's garden.
The--"
"It's a fine description," interrupted Wallingford. "I'd be able to pick
her out any place from it; but what was her name before she shortened
it?"
"You want to know too quick," complained Blackie. "You ought to have
waited till I explained something more about her; but you always were an
impatient cuss, and I'll tell you. Her name was and is, upon the
bill-boards and in the barber-shop windows, Violet Bonnie, whose
exquisite voice and perfect figure--"
"Is _she_ divorced again?" once more interrupted Wallingford.
"Last week," answered Blackie with no abatement of his enthusiasm, "and
Happy Horace happened to be on the spot. I was introduced to her over at
Shirley's the night she was celebrating the granting of her decree, and
I had so much money with me it made my clothes look lumpy. She took an
awful shine to that bank roll; not so much the diameter of it but the
way I rolled it. It never rested, and by two in the morning she had
transferred her affections from the swiftly flowing mezuma to me. At
four o'clock G. M. we waded out from among the ocean of empties and,
attended by a party so happy they didn't care whether it was day before
yesterday or day after to-morrow, we took passage in seaworthy
taximeters and floated to the Little Church Around the Corner, where the
bright and shining arc light of musical comedy became Mrs. Violet Bonnie
Daw. It was a case of love at first sight."
"For how long have you secured a lease?" inquired Wallingford.
"I don't know," replied Blackie reflectively. "She was married the first
time for three years, the second for two and the third for one.
According to those figures Number Four would have a right to look
forward to about six months of married bliss."
"I never was drunk for six months at a time in my life," reflected
Wallingford, "but I can see how it could happen. When it's all over,
come around to me and I'll lead you to a sanitarium. In the meantime,
when am I to have a chance to congratulate the lady?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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