“No.”
“Andy Westerman,” he said impressively and then, as the name communicated none of its significance to Gene, he added impatiently: “Why, you’ve heard of the Westermans, haven’t you?… My God! what have you been doing all your life?… You’ve heard of the Westerman vacuum cleaners and electric refrigerators, haven’t you?… Why, he’s worth $20, 000, 000 if he’s worth a cent!… The craziest man that ever lived!” he said, breaking suddenly into a sharp recollective laugh.
“Who? Westerman?”
“No…. My room-mate… that damned Andy Westerman…. Do you want to meet him?”
“Is he up here with you?”
“Why, that’s what I’m telling you,” he said impatiently.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” said Robert with a laugh. “In jail by now, I reckon…. I left him down at the Copley Plaza an hour ago stopping everyone who came in and asking him if he’d ever been to Harvard…. If the man said yes, Andy would haul off and hit him as hard as he could…. God! the craziest man!” he said. Then, in a feverish staccato monologue, he continued: “The damnedest story you ever heard…. You never heard anything like the way I met him in your life…. Passed right out in the gutter on Park Avenue one night…. All alone…. They’d given me knock-out drops in some joint and robbed me…. Waked up in the most magnificent apartment you ever saw in your life…. Most beautiful woman you ever saw sitting right there on the bed holding my hand…. Andy Westerman’s sister…. God! they’ve got stuff in that place that cost a fortune…. They’ve got one picture that the old man paid a hundred thousand dollars for…. Damned little thing that doesn’t take up a foot of space…. Twenty million dollars! Yes, sir!… And those two get it all…. Why, it’ll ruin me!” he burst out. "It takes every cent I can get to keep up with’em…. My God! I never saw a place like this in my life!… These people up here think no more of spending a thousand dollars than we’d think of fifty cents down home…. God! I’ve got to do something…. I’ve got to get money somehow…. Yes, sir, Robert is going to be right up there among them…. Apartment on Park Avenue and everything…. God! that’s the most beautiful woman in the world! All I want is to sleep with her just once…. Yes, sir, just once….
“And to think that she’d go and throw herself away on that damned consumptive little… !” he fairly ground his
