from This Man is Dangerous by Peter Cheyney

All of which is very fine but it don’t get you no place an’ it don’t do anything about that smart jane Miranda van Zelden who is a baby who has caused me a whole lot of trouble an’ I don’t mean maybe.

Presenting Miranda van Zelden – glorifying pulchritude. Ladies an’ gentleman give the little girl a hand. Now you know each other I’ll wise you up about Miranda. This dame is an heiress to about seventeen million dollars – does it make you gasp some? She is also as wild as they make ‘em, an’ she is about the swellest looker that ever a tired businessman dreamt about while he was bein’ kept late at the office.

She is lithe like a panther with a figure that could bust up a diamond wedding an’ she dances like a fairy.

I had got my own ideas in pickle for that dame.

I give her a quick once-over an’ I see that she is looking at me very old fashioned like.

It’s funny that this dame should decide that she might like to fall for me some time.

Say, has that dame curves, or has she curves?

She was wearing some shimmery sorta gown made of some stuff that just clung around as if it liked her plenty.

Fellers get into rackets because they want to buy some dame swell clothes, because they want to make her, or because they wanta look like great big he-men, so they get around the place, shootin’ and racketin’, bumping off coppers an’ each other, heistin’ banks, snatchin’ people and generally kicking hell out of everything.