"Hector!" he hollers. "You're a rich man! No more baseball for yours—why, you can buy a team if you want it and—"
"I thought you claimed you never drank," I says.
"What is your friend ravin' about?" inquires Hector.
Alex answers by shovin' a pink slip of paper into his hands. It was the first check for fifty thousand bucks I ever seen in my life and it was signed by the secretary of the U. S. treasury!
"Why—what kinda stuff is this?" mutters Hector, turnin' the check over and over. "It's made out to me! Why—who—where—who give you—"
"It's all yours!" says Alex, rubbin' his hands together and displayin' all his back teeth. "I took your food to Washington and got the government experts to try it out. They been lookin' for a one-piece ration for the army. They wanted somethin' cheap, palatable and nourishin' that the men would take to. They was after a food that could be easily packed and shipped. They give your food every possible test and accepted it. That fifty thousand is only a first payment—we still got four hundred and fifty thousand comin' for the invention and—"
"My Gawd!" gasps Hector. "They give up all this money for that?"
"Sure!" rattles on Alex. "And all you gotta do is go to the laboratory they're gonna build and show 'em how to make it. We still got four hundred and—"
"Where d'ye get that we stuff?" I butts in, seein' my bet with Alex goin' south. "Hector put that over and—"
"And I put him over!" says Alex. "I'm the young feller that showed him where his ace was! I therefore take one thousand dollars from you, with that weddin' chest of silver, and I'll only charge Hector ten per cent of his profits, as he was my first patient. I—"