Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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Bushmill frowned.

“You could have lived a week at a small hotel for what it costs you here by the day,” he remarked.

“I don’t know the names of any other hotels.”

Corcoran smiled apologetically. It was a singularly charming and somehow entirely confident smile, and Julius Bushmill was filled with a mixture of pity and awe. There was something of the snob in him, as there is in all self-made men, and he realized that this young man was telling the defiant truth.

“Any plans?”

“No.”

“Any abilities—or talents?”

Corcoran considered.

“I can speak most languages,” he said. “But talents—I’m afraid the only one I have is for spending money.”

“How do you know you’ve got that?”

“I can’t very well help knowing it.” Again he hesitated. “I’ve just finished running through a matter of half a million dollars.”

Bushmill’s exclamation died on its first syllable as a new voice, impatient, reproachful and cheerfully anxious, shattered the seclusion of the grill.

“Have you seen a man without a vest named Bushmill? A very old man about fifty? We’ve been waiting for him about two or three hours.”