The Sunday Gentleman by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

were college pennants hung on the walls.
    Then, still on the first floor, there was an art gallery with a reproduction of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne , a library with shelves holding one thousand books (mainly classics of biography, history, poetry, and fiction, all to Minna’s taste), a vast dining room with silver dinner service, and a great Turkish ballroom with a towering water-spouting fountain centered on a parquetry floor whose woods formed mosaic patterns.
    To reach the boudoirs of love upstairs, guests were led through potted palms and Grecian statuary, and up one of the two thickly carpeted mahogany staircases. In any one of the thirty boudoirs, the customer and the beautiful girl of his choice could enjoy quiet privacy and incredible luxury. The basic boudoir was furnished with a marble-inlaid brass bed, a mirrored ceiling, a shower or a gold bathtub, freshly cut roses in vases, imported oil paintings, concealed push buttons that rang bells for champagne. Yet each bedroom had its individuality. One had an automatic perfume spray over the bed. Another had a silver-white spotlight directed upon the divan. A third had a genuine Turkish mattress on the floor, covered by a white cashmere blanket. And on special occasions, Minna Everleigh, who was partial to butterfly pins on her gowns, loosed live butterflies to flutter disconcertingly about the boudoirs and parlors below.
    After his first inspection of the opulent palace, Jack Lait, who was to become editor of the New York Mirror , exclaimed passionately (if sacrilegiously) to reporter friends, “Minna and Aida Everleigh are to pleasure what Christ was to Christianity!”
    A visitor at the Everleigh Club was never rushed from the entrance to a bedroom on the second floor. He was given the illusion—at least until he received his bill—of being the guest of honor at a dinner in a wealthy home. Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology , recalled in 1944, six years before his death, what it had been like to call upon the Everleighs. Masters, who was in his early thirties when the club was at its peak, described a visit to the brothel. He noted that, of the two sisters, Minna was “somehow the larger personality, the more impressive figure.” Often, he said, “she came to the door when the bell rang. Her walk was a sort of caterpillar bend and hump, pause and catch up. She was remarkably thin. Her hair was dark and frizzled, her face thin and refined. ‘How is my boy?’ was her cordial salutation.”
    Minna’s boy was soon fine. He had been given to understand that he was expected to spend no less than fifty dollars during the evening. In the Turkish ballroom, near the splashing fountain, or in one of the colorful parlors, he would order a bottle of French wine for twelve dollars (later, if he wished another bottle sent to a boudoir upstairs, the cost would rise to fifteen dollars). After exchanging pleasantries with friends he recognized, he would listen to one of the three four-piece orchestras playing, most often, “Stay in Your Own Back Yard” or the miserable tune composed by the alderman of the First Ward and one of the two dominant political figures of the Levee, John Coughlin (endearingly known as “Bathhouse John”). This song was “Dear Midnight of Love.” The customer was waited upon, hand and foot, by colored valets and maids, and flirtatiously but decorously engaged by one of the club’s thirty attractive girls.
    If he came to the club for dinner, as well as for more desired pleasures, the guest was next escorted into the dining hall. There, on damask linen, with music still echoing in his ears, he would partake of pheasant or roast turkey or guinea fowl, served with more wine. Dinner, without wine or feminine companionship, was fifty dollars minimum. If he had brought along business associates and engaged hostesses for them, his dinner party might cost him fifteen hundred dollars.
    Finally, at a much later hour, all appetites sated