One look at his massive fists and hard little eyes was enough to cool any hasty temper. So it was then, that Ansell and Bogle had worked together for six months. They drifted from place to place, spending their morning dispensing coloured water in mysterious looking green bottles and, in the afternoons, selling them by quickfire sales talk to anyone foolish enough to listen.
Ansell represented the brains of the concern and Bogle the brawn. It was Bogle who set up the small tent and the collapsible platform. It was Bogle who set out the green bottles in neat rows and beat a small drum to attract attention.
The drum was Bogle’s own idea and in some districts it produced considerable dividends. Ansell would sit inside the tent, smoking a battered pipe, until Bogle’s hoarse whisper: “A big bunch of suckers waitin’” brought him to his feet. Then he would sweep majestically from the tent, his eyes blazing with fanatical enthusiasm and, cast spells over the bewildered audience.
Bogle would display his gigantic muscles, built entirely by Doctor Ansell’s Virile Tablets (a box of fifty for three dollars). Pictures of a drearily scraggy woman would be passed round the crowd with a comparison picture of the same woman equipped with a figure that made the natives’ eyes grow round. Doctor Ansell’s Bust Developer (a box of twenty- five pills for two dollars fifty) was responsible for this attractive transformation.
Ansell and Bogle preferred Lorencillo’s café to any other eating place. Few Americans came to the café and after the noise and bustle of the City, it was somewhere to pass a peaceful evening.
Bogle swished the last two inches of beer round in his glass. “The cops’ll have forgotten me by now,” he said. “It’s nearly a year ago. That’s a long time. Besides, you never saw those two guys. I was doing the State a service.”
“Talk sense,” Ansell returned. “How do you think we’d live? Can you imagine anyone buying my Virile pills in Chicago?”
Bogle was no longer listening. He was stating with eyes like organ-stops at the egg-yolk blonde who had come out of the café and was standing on the steps looking round the crowded
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, clutching at the table. “Take a look at that!”
Ansell sighed, “She’s certainly nice to look at, but she’d begin by stroking your hair and wind up with your scalp. You’re moving out of your class, Bogle.”