Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Oh, just—Jones,” he answered uneasily.

She looked at him in surprise.

“Why, how partial!” she exclaimed, laughing. “How—I might even say how fragmentary.”

Mr. Jones looked around him in a frightened way.

“Well, I tell you,” he said finally, “I don’t guess my first name is much suited to this sort of thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Rip.”

“Rip!”

Eight eyes turned reproachfully upon him.

“Young man,” exclaimed Girard, “you don’t mean that my old friend in his senses named his son that!”

Jones shifted defiantly on his feet.

“No, he didn’t,” he admitted. “He named me Oswald.”

There was a ripple of sympathetic laughter.

“Now you four go along,” said Girard, sitting down at his desk. “Tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp you report to my general manager, Mr. Galt, and the tournament begins. Meanwhile if Lola has her coupé-sport-limousine-roadster-landaulet, or whatever she drives now, she’ll probably take you to your respective hotels.”

After they had gone Girard’s face grew restless again and he stared at nothing for a long time before he pressed the button that started the long-delayed stream of traffic through his mind.