Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/5



BY STANLEY SHAW

ISS Anita Maloney was tripping down Fifth Avenue on her way to Belford's Big Department Store, where she would spend the day behind the jewelry counter selling "Guaranteed $90 Diamond Rings, this day only $49.98."

Anita was a sight for tired eyes, refreshment for frazzled nerves and relief for saw-edged dispositions. They certainly do not come prettier than Anita anywhere on the Avenue, and that is saying considerable for the young lady. One look at Anita should have been enough to start any sensible young man to studying the house-furnishing goods windows. Her hair was the color of rich burnt umber and abundant, her complexion cream and rose, and her lips presented that crimson cupid's bow effect, alike the pride of artists and the despair of femininity in the flesh.

There may not have been any tremendous excess of gray matter behind Miss Anita Maloney's transcendent pulchritude, yet it is on record that amazing undertakings are often attempted on limited assets, and beauty minus may not, after all, be such poor capital for a penniless young lady just turned nineteen, especially if she have as a silent partner one of the richest men in the country.

Leaving Miss Anita Maloney, we must step across to West 86th Street, the home of Mr. John Thomas Derrington, said to be worth some fifty million dollars. Permit that satisfying sum to sink into your soul, but don't jump at conclusions: John Thomas has a wife fully capable of keeping him out of the clutches of designing beauties; furthermore, the passion of John Thomas's life is old masters, not young misses.

Vast wealth is popularly supposed to breed inefficient digestive apparatuses, insomnia and sour dispositions. In furtherance of a more equitable distribution of this world's needful, it is to be hoped that such is sometimes the case; truth compels the statement, however, that, in spite of his money, J. T. owned the digestion of an ostrich, a chronic propensity for sleeping like a husky infant and a perpetually sunny disposition. Quite a jolly, chaffing old millionaire was John Thomas, very fond of his jokes. Yet he was not thoroughly happy; the worm of discontent did sometimes gnaw at his vitals.

The cause of John Thomas's repining was that he did not possess the famous Skagpole Venus, and, though he did own a goodly share of