Part 17 (1/2)
”Funny, ain't it? But there's no telling what will catch the tired business man, is there, Ben?”
”Well, what does catch him?” demanded Stull angrily. ”What's the answer?”
”I guess she's the answer, Ben.”
”Ah, leave the kid alone----”
”I'm going to have the car sent up here. I'm going to take her out. Go on to Saratoga if you want to. I'll meet you there----”
”When?”
”When I'm ready,” replied Brandes evenly. But he smiled.
Stull looked at him, and his white face, soured by dyspepsia, became sullen with wrath. At such times, too, his grammar suffered from indigestion.
”Say, Eddie,” he began, ”can't no one learn you nothin' at all? How many times would you have been better off if you'd listened to me?
Every time you throw me you hand yourself one. Now that you got a little money again and a little backing, don't do anything like _that_----”
”Like what?”
”Like chasin' dames! Don't act foolish like you done in Chicago last summer! You wouldn't listen to me then, would you? And that Denver business, too! Say, look at all the foolish things you done against all I could say to save you--like backing that cowboy plug against Battling Jensen!--Like taking that big hunk o' beef, Walstein, to San Antonio, where Kid O'Rourke put him out in the first! And everybody's laughing at you yet! Ah----” he exclaimed angrily, ”somebody tell me why I don't quit you, you big dill pickle! I wish someone would tell me why I stand for you, because I don't know.... And look what you're doing now; you got some money of your own and plenty of syndicate money to put on the races and a big comis.h.!.+ You got a good theayter in town with Morris Stein to back you and everything--and look what you're doing!” he ended bitterly.
Brandes tightened his dental grip on his cigar and squinted at him good-humouredly.
”Say, Ben,” he said, ”would you believe it if I told you I'm stuck on her?”
”Ah, you'd fall for anything. I never seen a skirt you wouldn't chase.”
”I don't mean that kind.”
”What kind, then?”
”This is on the level, Ben.”
”What! Ah, go on! _You_ on the level?”
”All the same, I am.”
”You can't be on the level! You don't know how.”
”Why?”
”You got a wife, and you know d.a.m.n well you have.”
”Yes, and she's getting her divorce.”
Stull regarded him with habitual and sullen distrust.
”She hasn't got it yet.”