New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction
The silver-fizz was flat now, but every sip of it was nevertheless
full of reviving grace, and he sat in the big leather rocker to think
things over. As he did so his eye caught something that made him start
from his chair so suddenly that he had to put both hands to his head.
Under the table was a bit of light orange paper. A fifty-dollar bill!
In that moment--that is, after he had painfully stooped down to get it
and had smoothed it out to assure himself that it was real--this
beautifully printed government certificate looked to him about the
size of a piano cover. An instant before, disaster had stared him in
the face. This was but Thursday morning, and, having paid his hotel
bill on Monday, he had the balance of the week to go on; but for that
week he would have been chained to this hotel. Now he was foot-loose,
now he was free, and his first thought was of his only possible
resource, Blackie Daw, in Boston!
It took two hours of severe labor on the part of a valet, two
bell-boys and a barber to turn the Wallingford wreck into his usual
well-groomed self, but the hour of sailing saw him somnolently, but
safely ensconced on a Boston packet.
CHAPTER XV
THE BROADWAY QUARTET CONTINUES TO TAKE
WALLINGFORD'S MONEY
Blackie Daw's most recent Boston address had been: "Yellow Streak
Mining Company, Seven Hundred and Ten Marabon Building," and yet when
J. Rufus paused before number seven hundred and ten of that building
he found its glass door painted with the sign of the National
Clockers' Association. Worried by the fact that Blackie had moved, yet
struck by the peculiar coincidence of his place being occupied by the
concern that had given him the tip on Razzoo, he walked into the
office to inquire the whereabouts of his friend. He found three girls
at a long table, slitting open huge piles of envelopes and removing
from them money, postal orders and checks--mostly money, for the sort
of people who patronized the National Clockers' Association were
quite willing to "take a chance" on a five- or a twenty-dollar bill
in the mails. Behind a newspaper, in a big leather chair near a
flat-top mahogany desk, with his feet conveniently elevated on the
waste-basket, sat a gentleman who, when he moved the paper aside to
see whom his visitor might be, proved to be Blackie Daw himself.
"Hello, none other than the friend of me childhood!" exclaimed
Blackie, springing to his feet and extending his hand. "What brings
you here?"
"Broke," replied Wallingford briefly. "They cleaned me. Got any
money?"
Mr. Daw opened the top drawer of his desk, and it proved to be nearly
full of bills, thrown loosely in, with no attempt at order or sorting.
"Money's the cheapest thing in Boston," he announced, waving his hand
carelessly over the contents of the drawer. "Help yourself, old man.
The New York mail will bring in plenty more. They've had two winners
there this week, and when it does fall for anything, N'Yawk's the
biggest yap town on earth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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