Free The Sunday Gentleman by Irving Wallace Page B

a half-million dollars. They lost most of it later through investments, but don’t think they are poor, because they are not. They live well, and have their jewels still. They are not poor, they are not dependent on anyone.”
    I was relieved about that, and wanted to let Minna know, but she was rambling on.
    “We had several large parties in this house in the thirties, but in June, 1937, when the war came, we swore off parties. We only go out to the theater sometimes now. Do you think that’s strange? But I do want to finish writing my book. Women friends are always calling about parties, about club meetings, about teas, but I have to refuse them…We ordered eight more copies of Eldridge’s books, something different for the reader, really, and I shall send you four in January of the new year. Eldridge is the modern Guy de Maupassant…I saw that movie, The Dolly Sisters , did you? I couldn’t help laughing at the picture, at Betty Grable and that other girl—I forget her name—oh, yes—June Haver. Yes. Oh dear, they were too lustful. Women in our day just weren’t like that at all, but I suppose men want to see that today. Remember the old saying, ‘What a man sees in a woman, he gets.’ Well, nowadays, Irving, he certainly wants a hot number, that’s what he wants today!”
    She broke into a great peal of laughter, then suddenly sobered. “How old are you?” she asked.
    “I’m thirty.”
    “Thirty?” She laughed nicely. “What a wonderful age.” She paused, and then she said, “I will speak to the Everleigh sisters. You may yet get what you desire. But meantime, work on other things. There are more fish in the sea than are ever caught. Best wishes for the new year, darling, and thank you for the most perfect, most charming letter we have ever received, darling, and good-bye for now.”
    Dazed, yet stimulated, by my first personal contact with Minna Everleigh, I wondered when we would speak to one another again. The week passed without another call from Minna. But the sisters were on my mind, and so was Christmas, then fast approaching, and three days before Christmas I went to a bookstore on Fifth Avenue and bought deluxe editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and ordered them gift wrapped and sent to Minna and Aida Lester.
    The following day, a Sunday, the sixth day since Minna’s first call to me, I was downstairs in the lobby of the Royal-ton purchasing pipe tobacco, when I was summoned to the telephone. A Miss Lester, I was told, wished to speak to me. While this conversation was briefer than our first, it was as meaningful to me, because, at last, I met Aida of the golden hair and gold piano.
    At once, Minna said that she had just mailed a package to me. Her latest shipment of Little Blue Books had arrived from Girard, Kansas, and she was sending me several by Eldridge which she hoped I would consider for dramatization.
    Before I could thank her, she began to reminisce about her sister and herself. “Aida and I were of a family of five,” she said. “Everyone wants to be something in their life, and I was no different. Like that young actor in California we’ve been corresponding with. He wrote us, just as you did, under the erroneous impression that we were the Everleigh sisters. I corrected him. He now sends us snapshots of himself and baskets of fruit. He wants to be a writer as well as an actor. He writes well. I suspect he has a Semite strain. I believe the greatest poets, writers, actors were Semites. Unfortunately, Aida and I are Aryan. I wish we weren’t. What are you, Irving? Are you a Semite?”
    “Definitely,” I said.
    Minna laughed. “I love that word ‘definitely.’ I have a feeling you’re going to go far…Look, Irving, I want you to talk to my sister, Aida, also. She’s ninety-nine percent more worthy than I am. I’m going to call down to her, and she’ll go into the library, among all our books, and