United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Jimmie Dale smiled. "Nix!" said Jimmie Dale. "I just blew in from Chicago. Used to know de Wowzer dere. He said dis place was on de level, an' I could always find him here, dat's all." "Sure, youse can!" returned the barkeeper heartily. "Only he ain't here now. He beat it about fifteen minutes ago, him an' Dago Jim. I guess youse'll find him at Chang's, I heard him an' Dago say dey was goin' dere.
It was the resort, not only of the most depraved Chinese element, but of the worst "white" thugs that made New York their headquarters here, in the succession of cellars, roughly partitioned off to make a dozen rooms on either side of the passage, dope fiends sucked at the drug, and Chinese gamblers spent the greater part of their lives; here, murder was hatched and played too often to its hellish end; here, the scum of the underworld sought refuge from the police to the profit of Chang Foo; and here, somewhere, in one of these rooms, was the Wowzer.
May no mournful voice be found, Though wowzers do attack us! In the darkness I called to them as they went down the gangway into their boat, "What is a wowzer?" "'E's a bloomin' 'oo wants to do unto others wot 'e's bleedin' well done to 'imself." The wowzers are more active in Hawaii, the most temperate portion of Polynesia, than in the Maori isles of New Zealand.
It he failed in that Jimmie Dale's lips drooped downward in grim curves at the corners. A chance! Already the Wowzer had at least a half hour's lead, and, worse still, there was no telling which one of a dozen places the man might have chosen to retreat to with his loot. Time passed. His mind obsessed, Jimmie Dale's physical acts were almost wholly mechanical.
Numbed for an instant, his brain cleared now, working with lightning speed, leaping from premise to conclusion. The crush in the theatre lobby the pushing, the jostling, the close contact the Wowzer, the slickest, cleverest pickpocket in the United States! For a moment he could have laughed aloud in a sort of ghastly, defiant mockery he himself had predicted an unexpected aftermath, had he not!
A minute, two minutes more, and Chinatown would be in an uproar Chang Foo would see to that and the Wowzer would prod him on. The danger was far from over yet. And then, as he ran, Jimmie Dale gave a little gasp of relief. Just ahead, drawn up at the curb, stood a taxicab waiting, probably, for a private slumming party. Jimmie Dale put on a spurt, reached it, and wrenched the door open.
True, if there were two men in the city of New York whose crimes merited neither sympathy nor mercy, those two men were the Wowzer and Dago Jim but yet, after all, it was a human life, and, even if his own had been in the balance, thank God it had been through no act of his that Dago Jim had gone out!
And then gradually impulse gave way to calmer reason, and he slowed his pace to a quick, less noticeable walk. The Wowzer! That was it! There was yet a chance the Wowzer! A merciless rage, cold, deadly, settled upon him. It was the Wowzer who had stolen his pocketbook, and with it the letter. There could be no doubt of that. Well, there would be a reckoning at least before the end!
She maintains that the debutantalizing flapper, now driven right out in the open by the reformers, is the real salvation of our mid-victrolian society. The nature of a wowzer is hinted in a ditty sung by certain uninhibited individuals as they lolled and imbibed among the mystic atolls and white shadows: "Whack the cymbal! Bang the drum! Votaries of Bacchus!
He could have groaned, cried out aloud! "Say, thanks, Wowzer, for piping me off!" said Jimmie Dale effusively. "Oh, dat's all right," responded the Wowzer graciously. "Only keep it under yer hat except wid de crowd. De bulls ain't on, an' de Mole saw her first see? Dere ain't goin' to be no buttin' in till she gets hers!
Word Of The Day