"Stout, Rex - The Rope Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stout Rex)

Dear Fraser:

I won the big prize all right. I'm going to take a month off for a little trip to New York. I've never
been there. Yours truly,

R. Duggett

Even from Rick, that was amazing. Denver or K. C., yes. People did go to those places, and
sometimes even to St. Louis. Indeed, it was understandable that a man might conceivably
undertake, for pleasure, a journey to Chicago.

But New York!

Absurd.THE ROPE DANCE

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3

You might as well say Constantinople and be done with it. However, it was just like Rick
Duggett. Having decided to visit a big city, you might know he would choose the biggest. He
never did anything by halves.

Thus it was that Rick arrived in New York, with a roll of bills amounting to eight hundred and
eighteen dollars in his pocket, about two o'clock of a sunny October afternoon.

Having stopped off in Chicago to buy a suit of clothes, his outward appearance, as he emerged
from the Grand Central Station onto Forty- second Street, was not as startling as you might have
expected of the champion roper of Arizona. But he had not thought of discarding the floppy
broad- brimmed Stetson, and the ruggedness of his brown countenance and the flashing clearness
of his eye were patently not of Broadway.

So it was that before he had even reached Times Square, threading his way through the throng
westward on Forty- second Street, he was accosted by a dapper white-faced person in a blue serge
suit who murmured something, without preamble, concerning "the third race at Latonia," and a
"sure thing," and "just around the corner."

"Listen, sonny," said Rick, not unkindly. "I don't bet on horses unless I can see 'em. Besides, if
I'd wanted to gamble I'd of stayed in Honeville. I came to New York to see the sights, and I
guess you're one of 'em. Much obliged. Here's two bits "

And he thrust a quarter into the hand of the astonished "runner."

After he had tramped around for a couple of hours and got his eyes full he took a taxicab to the
Hotel Croyville, which had been recommended to him by some one on the train.

It is too bad that I can't describe his timidity on entering the cab and his novel sensations as the
engine started and the thing shot forward. The trouble is that the owner of the ranch on which he
worked was also the owner of two automobiles, and Rick was a pretty good hand at driving a car
himself. Yet he was indeed impressed by the chauffeur's marvellous dexterity in threading his