Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн
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A few minutes later he was writing on a yellow blank in the telegraph office below:
“ellery jackson, chapel street, new haven, connecticut.
“there is not the slightest reason for coming home, because you have no home to come to anymore. the mammoth trust company of new york will pay you fifty dollars a month for the rest of your life, or for as long as you can keep yourself out of jail.
“john jackson.”
“That’s—that’s a long message, sir,” gasped the dispatcher, startled. “Do you want it to go straight?”
“Straight,” said John Jackson, nodding.
III
He rode seventy miles that afternoon, while the rain dried up into rills of dust on the windows of the train and the country became green with vivid spring. When the sun was growing definitely crimson in the west he disembarked at a little lost town named Florence, just over the border of the next state. John Jackson had been born in this town; he had not been back here for twenty years.
The taxi-driver, whom he recognized, silently, as a certain George Stirling, playmate of his youth, drove him to a battered hotel, where, to the surprise of the delighted landlord, he engaged a room. Leaving his raincoat on the sagging bed, he strolled out through a deserted lobby into the street.