Word: unctuous
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With the recent disbandment of the British Fascists, Captain Barker, penniless, sent Mrs. Barker home to her druggist father, exchanged her military uniform for a sleek cutaway, and was employed early last week to welcome guests with unctuous politeness by London's irreproachable Regent's Palace Hotel...
Later upon the scene came fat but foppish Captain Cohn. He has turned his hundreds of pounds into thousands and his thousands into millions by a series of wily maneuvers which have enabled him to get control of a huge, commanding bloc of Wagons-Lits securities. Shrewd, unctuous, Captain Cohn is not, however, the man to be satisfied with mere control. He is planning an amazing, manipulative coup. Last month he and Lord Dalziel visited Manhattan and quietly applied to list the shares of Wagons-Lits upon the New York Stock Exchange. If that listing is granted, they are reported...
...ever write the true biography. Presumably untrue is the tale that he got his stake in life through pocketing by agreement 40% of all he could wheedle from the late eccentric Baron Michelham in the interest of the estranged Baroness, Aimee Geraldine, nee Bradshaw. Today Captain Cohn, a fat, unctuous personage with a great mane of blond hair, is to be seen, sleekly appareled and carrying a lady's parasol to shield his eyes, at every major race meeting in Europe. Frequently, very frequently, his horses win. His Sir Galahad distanced Epinard in a match race for private stakes...
...whereas in reality he clanks chains and chews raw meat in the role of Wild Man at the 14th Street Palace of Living Wonders. Before that he was a vender of snake oil and Indian cure; and his compound sentences, derived from long professional practice, are rolled with an unctuous grandeur by George Hassell, who plays him to the last shake of his ponderous belly. You have the feeling that Thompson's lowly feathers are plucked from the same bird that gave Cyrano his white plume and that they are not much less pathetic for being so much more...
MOSQUITOES-William Faulkner-Boni & Liveright ($2.50). A dozen mosquitoes gather on a yacht in southern waters. The mosquitoes are: unctuous Mrs. Maurier, queen mosquito, owner of the yacht, collector of eccentric celebrities; over-mannered Mr. Talliaferro, who carries a malaria germ of artistic small talk; Jennie and Pete, lower order of flies-by-night invited on the party by Patricia, a young mosquito who, none the less, administers the most powerful sting. Other insects-an author, a smalltime poet with a dull buzz, a sculptor-swarm drowsily in the lethargic air. Love affairs, talk, small business, occupy their time until...