Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“What do you mean?” snarled the beggar. “Why, you Ga——”

He got no farther. The little man seemed to run at him suddenly, holding out his hands, and there was a sharp, smacking sound as the beggar came in contact with the sidewalk.

“You’re a fakir!” shouted Charles Stuart wildly. “I gave you a dollar when I first came here, before I found out you had ten times as much as I had. And you never gave it back!”

A stout, faintly intoxicated gentleman who was strutting expansively along the other sidewalk had seen the incident and came running benevolently across the street.

“What does this mean!” he exclaimed in a hearty, shocked voice. “Why, poor fellow—” He turned indignant eyes on Charles Stuart and knelt unsteadily to raise the beggar.

The beggar stopped cursing and assumed a piteous whine.

“I’m a poor man, Cap’n—”

“This is—this is horrible!” cried the Samaritan, with tears in his eyes. “It’s a disgrace! Police! Pol——!”

He got no farther. His hands, which he was raising for a megaphone, never reached his face—other hands reached his face, however, hands held stiffly out from a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound body! He sank down suddenly upon the beggar’s abdomen, forcing out a sharp curse which faded into a groan.