Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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I saw a clerk who cannot, I suspect, have been a youth of much penetration; for, though I schooled myself, I can hardly think that my face was free of signs of anxiety. I told him some airy tale of wishing to get the first possible boat for America. There was one in a fortnight. When I said, in as nonchalant a voice as I could muster: "Oh—that is some time, and my business demands haste," with a "Just a moment" he withdrew to the side of an elderly man at a rearward desk, an elderly man who had that air as of being ready to jump into the breach at a moment's notice, which I, observing, took for a sign that his suspicion was aroused.

Nothing of the sort of course; he was only eager to book a passage. He came over to me at once and echoing the "Just a moment" of the younger assistant, departed into a partitioned off room at the end of the office. Through the dulled glass I saw him take a receiver from the rests of a telephone. I made a turn on my heel to run from the door, sure that he was ringing up Duke Street, and then I gripped myself. I was going to see it through.