Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; College graduates -- Fiction; Gangsters -- Fiction
"Nor I," said Jimmy, "but he is going to marry Miss Compton and inherit
the business. He's the last man in the place that Compton would suspect.
It was just like suggesting to a man that his son was robbing him."
"Have you got the goods on him?" asked Edith.
"I will have as soon as the C.P.A.'s get to digging into the pay-roll,"
he replied, "and I just as good as got the information I need even
without that. Well, let's forget our troubles. What shall we do?"
"What do you want to do?" she asked.
He could not tell by either her tone or expression with what anxiety she
awaited his reply. "Suppose we do something exciting, like going to the
movies," he suggested with a laugh.
"That suits me all right," said the girl. "There is a dandy comedy down
at the Castle."
And so they went to the picture show, and when it was over he suggested
that they have a bite to eat.
"I'll tell you," Edith suggested. "Suppose we go to Feinheimer's
restaurant and see if we can't get that table that I used to eat at when
you waited on me?" They both laughed.
"If old Feinheimer sees me he will have me poisoned," said Jimmy.
"Not if you have any money to spend in his place."
It was eleven thirty when they reached Feinheimer's. The table they
wanted was vacant, a little table in a corner of the room and furthest
from the orchestra. The waiter, a new man, did not know them, and no one
had recognized them as they entered.
Jimmy sat looking at the girl's profile as she studied the menu-card.
She was very pretty. He had always thought her that, but somehow
to-night she seemed to be different, even more beautiful than in the
past. He wished that he could forget what she had been. And he realized
as he looked at her sweet girlish face upon which vice had left no
slightest impression to mark her familiarity with vice, that it might be
easy to forget her past. And then between him and the face of the girl
before him arose the vision of another face, the face of the girl that
he had set upon a pedestal and worshiped from afar. And with the
recollection of her came a realization of the real cause of his sorrow
and depression earlier in the evening.
He had attributed it to the unpleasant knowledge he had been forced to
partially impart to her father and also in some measure to the
regrettable interview he had had with her, but now he knew that these
were only contributory causes, that the real reason was that during the
months she had occupied his thoughts and in the few meetings he had had
with her there had developed within him, unknown to himself, a sentiment
for her that could be described by but one word--love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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