Says I, “What that generally means is that somebody else solves them.”
And Mr. Edgerton laughs and says, “Well, yes, but then if they solve
them wrong it ain’t your funeral.”
And he showed me how it goes. There will be two big fellows fighting
over some juicy bit of graft and they come to Washington and pull all
the strings they know of each of them trying to get the Spokesman to
give it to his gang. And the Spokesman listens polite to both of them
and tells both of them He’ll do the best he can and then He don’t do
nothing and both of them hates Him like poison and calls Him all the
names they can think of. But bye and bye they get tired of quarreling
and patch up some sort of agreement to divide the graft and then they
go off and think it over and say to themselves by golly that Guy is a
slick one, He knows how to take care of Himself and that’s the Sort we
need to run the country.
Well just about that time a couple comes into the Chink restaurant a
pair of swell lookers and I see they knows Mr. Edgerton. The gentleman
gives him a bow and the lady too but then she gets a glimpse of me and
she freezes up like she was hit by an artic cyclone and she goes by
with her nose high up like an aeroplane. And I see that Mr. Edgerton
is a bit flustered and don’t know what to talk about next and I says,
“It seems your lady friend don’t like the way I look perhaps she thinks
my hair is too decorative or some thing.” And he smiles, kind of
sickish like and I says, “Let me tell you how it is if you want to have
anything pretty in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey, you
have got to carry it along with you.” And he says, “Yes, I suppose so.”
I see he is badly rattled so I says, “I want you to know that I know
exactly how it is and you don’t have to try to fool me or yourself.
Everything is pure and sweet between us like we was the two babes
in the woods but I know too you ain’t going to get Washington smart
society to believe it. And I can guess how it’ll be if anybody tips off
Mrs. Edgerton to the fact that her husband is doing research work among
the plain people. By the way how’s the poor soul getting along?”
“Well,” he says, “just now the angina pectoris has moved on to one of
her toes.”
“Well,” says I, “at least it’s getting as far away from her mind as it
can and maybe it’ll move out altogether. But what I started to say is
this if you think you better not see me any more--”
“No, no!” he says real anxious. “No, Miss Riggs, please don’t desert me
in this crisis.”
“Crisis?” I says.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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