Five and ten

In the long reaches of what had become chronic insomnia John G. Rarick found himself mentally mouthing to himself phrases such as this: I am a rich man. I am a very rich man. Me...

His eyes, as he lifted them into quizzical peaks, made him look Asiatic in a way she detested. Oh yes, that closes the controversy, he was saying to himself. Oh yes. Oh yes. Rat...

Here was a man who, in casual discussion of a mediæval and practically obsolete gem, could quote from the _Divina Commedia_ the lines in which Dante uses these stones as a symbo...

Three enormous chandeliers, designed after the crowns of Merovingian kings, poured cunningly diffused pools of light on to this scene of mediæval resurrection. The very modern y...

“I hope you are finding your quarters comfortable, Doctor Gerkes,” said Jenny from the head of her table, where they sat sparsely grouped, because it could have accommodated fou...

They sat on the coping of the fountain, against a back-rest formed by a Malaga-grape vine the thickness of an arm. Delicate Asia Minor aconite crawled along the coping; and even...

The year that Rarick instructed his chauffeur to enter his office at precisely the stroke of four, and, regardless of who or what might be present, hand him his hat, the force b...

The Edgertons had decided to have a sense of humor about this sixty-eight-room white elephant, which five years previous had been rushed to completion in time for Leslie’s birth...

“She must be looking for us! Why the dickens did we do this, Berry? It’s this loony moonlight. We’ve been gone over an hour. Leslie shouldn’t let herself get this tipsy. Thank g...

Of course she did not see, nor did any of them, sitting there so politely mindful of the hand that held the money-bags. Nor did Rarick himself, for that matter. The need of his...

To the exclusive Dobson functions the John Raricks were not bidden. “Where do they get off?” gritted Jennifer between her teeth. “It’s town talk that her mother, old lady Emanie...

“Shut up!” he said. How his jaw slid around in that circular, grinding movement! Thank God it was Jennifer and not herself on the rack before him. She could defend Jennifer----

The night she arrived, and sat with Rarick in her high-neck black silk, a turquoise four-leaf clover her sole jewel, Rarick, visualizing his glittering Jennys in their places at...

Upstairs, since they had not troubled to open the men’s dormitory-camp, in a beautiful old spool-bed, Ramon, who had arrived a few days before, was asleep under sheets that she...

Too much, when Ramon, who loved life, was starving. Well, anyway, starving for the good things of life. Perhaps this tragedy was writing on the wall. Good times ahead. Out of th...

The disposition of over one hundred million dollars according to a man’s temperament, family, dependents, hobbies, preferences, philanthropies, altruisms, wisdoms, principles, a...

“Jennifer, idiot, if your comedy cannot be funnier, let it at least be deferred. I’ve a notion you’ll be interested in seeing first hand, sir, what we are doing with your money....

So then, Jenny did not know.... “In cases like this.” The great man was meeting just another case. Jenny’s, perhaps a little special by virtue of the impact of the name of Raric...

What sense of defeat was there perching now in the heart of her father, lying, himself, not forty of the appallingly expensive feet from her own bed. What bankruptcy there? What...

He was relieved that it had come. He had been lying there, pitying her in her sleep. A week had passed; and since she had not spoken, he had resolved to see Noon again the follo...

There hung over the Rarick household the air of some one about to be married or about to set out on a voyage of exploration. Boxes and packages began to arrive at the house thre...

The futility of waiting further was borne in upon him. If the death of Jenny, leaving them stranded in this wilderness of Gothic aisles, had not hurled them into quick and sympa...

“Yes. And now I have a new one. A stiff one. The job of dying a poor man. The entire philosophy behind that determination is in this stack of papers. The years I have left are f...