“And it isn’t set down in her lines to fix up alimony for some other woman,” commented the pseudo Mrs. Phillips.
A couple of men, one nattily dressed and with curly hair, and the other short and fat and wearing a flaming waistcoat, passed on their way down to the betting-shed and carelessly tipped their hats.
“Do you know those two cheaps?” she inquired, eying their retreating backs with disfavor.
Again Wallingford chuckled.
“Know them!” he replied. “I should say I do! Green-Goods Harry Phelps and Badger Billy Banting? Why, they and their friends, Short-Card Larry Teller and Yap Pickins, framed up a stud poker game on me the first week I hit town, with the lovely idea of working a phoney pinch on me; but I got a real cop to hand them the triple cross, and took five thousand away from them so easy it was like taking four-o’clock milk from a doorstep.”
“I’m glad of it,” she said, with as much trace of vindictiveness as her beauty specialist would have permitted. “They’re an awful low-class crowd. They came over to my table one night in Shirley’s, after I’d met them only once, and butted in on a rich gentleman friend of mine from Washington. They run up an awful bill on him and never offered even to buy cigars, and then when he was gone for a minute to pick out our wagon, they tried to get fresh with me right in front of mother. I’m glad somebody stung ’em.”
A very thick-set man, with an inordinately broad jaw and an indefinable air of blunt aggressiveness, came past them and nodded to J. Rufus with a grudging motion toward his shapeless slouch hat.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Jake Block,” he replied. “A big owner with so much money he could bed his horses in it, and an ingrowing grouch that has put a crimp in his information works. He’s never been known to give out a tip since he was able to lisp ‘mamma.’ He eats nothing but table d’hôte dinners so he won’t have to tell the waiters what he likes.”