Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
Lovell and the afflicted entered. The outer office had half a dozen
chairs, and a table, on which were some medical magazines. Lovell
scrutinized the ten applicants keenly, and finally beckoned to a tall,
well-built chap with a blond mustache, whose unfortunate ailment was not
so extreme as the others, to follow him into the inner office. The
man did so. There were a desk, three chairs, a table, and a dozen
polished-oak boxes that looked as though they might contain vibrators.
Lovell closed the door, sat down at the desk, motioned to the blond man
to approach, and whispered:
“What's your name?”
“Lewis J. Wright.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Working?”
“Not steadily.”
“Profession?”
“Cabinet-maker.”
“Family?”
“No.”
“Do you object to traveling?”
“No; like it.”
“We pay sixty dollars a week, all traveling and living expenses. Will
you go to London, England?”
“To do what?”
“Nothing!”
“What?”
“Nothing!” again whispered the manager, very earnestly. He seemed
anxious to convince Mr. Wright of his good intentions. “Nothing at all!
Sixty a week and expenses!”
“I don't understand,” said Mr. Lewis J. Wright, with an uneasy smile.
His excitement aggravated the malady and his neck jerked and twitched
almost constantly.
“I want a man with St. Vitus's dance.”
“That's me,” said L. J. Wright, and proved it.
“And with an introspective turn of mind. Understand?”
“Not quite,” confessed the cabinet-maker.
“A man who likes to think about himself.”
“I guess I can fill the bill all right,” asserted L. J. Wright,
confidently. Sixty a week, all expenses, and a trip to London began to
look very attractive.
“Then you're engaged.” The manager nodded.
“I don't know yet what I'm to do,” ventured Wright.
“Nothing, I tell you.”
“Well, I'll do it, then!” And L. J. Wright smiled tentatively; but the
manager of the Acme Vibrator Company looked at him seriously--almost
reprovingly--and whispered so hoarsely that Wright felt like going after
cough-lozenges for him:
“Listen, Wright. You will go to London with a letter to Dr. Cephas W.
Atterbury, 23, Abbey Road, St. John's Wood, N. W. Every day you will sit
down in a comfortable chair in the doctor's anteroom, where the patients
wait, from nine to eleven a.m. and five to seven p.m. You will think of
your St. Vitus's dance. For doing this you will get sixty dollars a week
from us and your hotel bill will be paid by the doctor. You may not have
to sail for a month, but your salary begins on Monday. Come here every
Saturday and get twenty-five dollars on account. When you sail you will
get all that's owing to you besides four weeks' salary in advance, and a
round-trip ticket, first-class.”
“But if I get stranded in London--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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