Tales From The Jazz Age (World Classics) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald [Fitzgerald, F. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, novel, book, bestseller, top10, interactive media, urban romantics
Publisher: Urban Romantics
Published: 2019-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

“There,” admitted Washington, “I grant you that. But try to think of an alternative. I’ve offered to have all or any of you painlessly executed if you wish. I’ve offered to have your wives, sweethearts, children, and mothers kidnapped and brought out here. I’ll enlarge your place down there and feed and clothe you the rest of your lives. If there was some method of producing permanent amnesia I’d have all of you operated on and released immediately, somewhere outside of my preserves. But that’s as far as my ideas go.”

“How about trusting us not to peach on you?” cried some one.

“You don’t proffer that suggestion seriously,” said Washington, with an expression of scorn. “I did take out one man to teach my daughter Italian. Last week he got away.”

A wild yell of jubilation went up suddenly from two dozen throats and a pandemonium of joy ensued. The prisoners clog-danced and cheered and yodled and wrestled with one another in a sudden uprush of animal spirits. They even ran up the glass sides of the bowl as far as they could, and slid back to the bottom upon the natural cushions of their bodies. The tall man started a song in which they all joined—

“Oh, we’ll hang the kaiser

On a sour apple-tree—”

Braddock Washington sat in inscrutable silence until the song was over.

“You see,” he remarked, when he could gain a modicum of attention. “I bear you no ill-will. I like to see you enjoying yourselves. That’s why I didn’t tell you the whole story at once. The man—what was his name? Critchtichiello?—was shot by some of my agents in fourteen different places.”

Not guessing that the places referred to were cities, the tumult of rejoicing subsided immediately.

“Nevertheless,” cried Washington with a touch of anger, “he tried to run away. Do you expect me to take chances with any of you after an experience like that?”

Again a series of ejaculations went up.

“Sure!”

“Would your daughter like to learn Chinese?”

“Hey, I can speak Italian! My mother was a wop.”

“Maybe she’d like t’learna speak N’Yawk!”

“If she’s the little one with the big blue eyes I can teach her a lot of things better than Italian.”

“I know some Irish songs—and I could hammer brass once’t.”

Mr. Washington reached forward suddenly with his cane and pushed the button in the grass so that the picture below went out instantly, and there remained only that great dark mouth covered dismally with the black teeth of the grating.

“Hey!” called a single voice from below, “you ain’t goin’ away without givin’ us your blessing?”

But Mr. Washington, followed by the two boys, was already strolling on toward the ninth hole of the golf course, as though the pit and its contents were no more than a hazard over which his facile iron had triumphed with ease.

VII

July under the lee of the diamond mountain was a month of blanket nights and of warm, glowing days. John and Kismine were in love. He did not know that the little gold football (inscribed with the legend Pro deo et patria et St.

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