Part 14 (1/2)
”Gee!” says I. ”You must have got next!”
”Did we?” says Millie. ”My word! Why, when we hit London the craze was just striking in over there. We was among the advance guard. Say, we hadn't been over ten days before we headed the bill at the Alcazar as the famous New York tango artists. Inside of two weeks more we were doing three turns a night, with all kinds of private dates on the side.
Say, would you believe it? I've danced with a real Duke! And Tim--why if it hadn't been for me on the spot there'd been no telling what would have happened. Those English society women are the limit. Then Paris.
Ah, _ma chere Paris_! Say, I'm a bear for Paris. Didn't we soak the price on when that Moulin Rouge guy came after us, though? _Ma foi!_ Say, he used to weep when be paid me the money. '_Mon Dieu!_ Five hundred francs for so small a _danse_!' But he paid. Trust Millie Moran!
Say, I collected a few glad rags over there too. What about this one?”
”It don't need any Paris label,” says I. ”Don't see how you got upstairs in it, though.”
”I can do a cartwheel in it,” says she. ”We've learned to handle ourselves some, Tim and I. And now I guess I'll take him out of hock.
You'll find two hundred gold in the package.”
”Thanks,” says I, openin' the long envelope. ”But what's this other?”
”Oh, that!” says she. ”Interest. Deed for a few lots in the new North Addition to Saskatoon.”
”Tut, tut!” says I. ”I can't take 'em. That wa'n't any loan I staked you to; just bread on the waters.”
”Well, you can't kick if it comes back a ham sandwich,” says she.
”Besides, the lots stand in your name now. They were a mile out of town when I bought 'em; but Brother Phil says the city's bulged that way since. They've got the boom, you know. That's where we've been sending all our spare salary. Phil's down here to see us open.”
”Eh?” says I. ”Not the surveyor!”
”He still does some of that,” says she.
”Do you suppose,” says I, ”I could get him to do a little stunt for me while he's here?”
”Do I?” says she. ”Why, he knows all about it. Brother Phil will go the limit for you.”
Uh-huh. Philip was up to all the fine points of the game, and the imitation he gave of layin' out a two-million-dollar factory site along Sucker Brook was perfect, even to loadin' his transit and target jugglers into a tourin' car right in front of the Rockhurst Trust Company.
Maybe that's how it come to be noised around that the Western Electric Company was goin' to locate a big plant on the tract. Anyway, before night I had three of the syndicate biddin' against each other confidential; but when Elisha P. runs it up to four figures, offerin' to meet me at the station with a certified check, I closes the deal with a bang.
”Swifty,” says I, hangin' up the 'phone, ”trot around to the Casino and get a lower box for to-night, while I find a florist's and order an eight-foot horseshoe of American beauties.”
”Chee!” says Swifty, gawpin'. ”What's doin'?”
”I'm tryin' to celebrate a doubleheader,” says I.
CHAPTER VII
REVERSE ENGLISH ON SONNY BOY
”Do you know, Shorty,” says J. Bayard Steele, balancin' his bamboo walkin' stick thoughtful on one forefinger, ”I'm getting to be a regular expert in altruism.”
”Can't you take something for it?” says I.
But he waves aside my comedy stab and proceeds, chesty and serious, ”Really, I am, though. It's this philanthropic executor work that I've been dragged into doing by that whimsical will of your friend, the late Pyramid Gordon, of course. I must admit that at first it came a little awkward, not being used to thinking much about others; but now--why, I'm getting so I can tell almost at a glance what people want and how to help them!”