A Daughter of Delilah — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 A FALSE TELEGRAM. my respected aunt, she ‘has already gone through every known stage of hysterics! No matter; I can explain all when I get home. What the devil brings me out of civil- ization I can’t understand! But I suppose every fellow who has a rich aunt is forced into purgatory occasionally. ’’ He glanced at the telegram, which he had no difficulty in deciphering, for the contents had already eaten into his brain in letters of fire. ‘““EDGAR ALSTON, Esq., care of Mrs. Radcliffe, Bellevue avenue, Cincinnati:—Go to the Stars and Stripes Hotel, Bridgley, at once. This is a matter of life and death. You are only an hour’s journey away. Let nothing detain you, or it will cause you and me life-long regret. ISABEL. ’”’ This precious missive had been dispatched from a New York up-town office, and the name attached was that of the loveliest houri who ever sang before the foot-lights—a paradisean nymph, whose word or glance had power suffi- cient to send Edgar Alston into throes of ecstasy or de- spair. ‘‘No,’’ decided Alston. “Queenie never sent that thing.’’ Queenie was the pet name of the new prima-donna, the fairy danseuse, whose grace of form, whose witching eyes, had enslaved a good score of New York’s wealthiest young — men. ‘‘No, Queenie never sent that thing. It is an infernal hoax, and if I discover the perpetrator, by the Eternal! he shall know what it is to quarrel with Edgar Alston!”’ His eyes ‘flashed ominously, and more than one oath dropped from his lips. ‘‘And her name to be used, too! Of course, I cannot show the telegram to Minnie. She would want to know all about Isabel, and would at once tumble to the fact that there must be some all-potent power in the dear name to Gomicbooks (ee) mn