Читать книгу Hard-Pan. A Story of Bonanza Fortunes онлайн

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Faring down the street with a quick step, John Gault passed many such dwellings, the homes of the city’s well-to-do and wealthy. Here and there an undrawn blind afforded him a glimpse of a glowing interior, where the tall, shrouded lamp cast its light over a room as gaily brilliant as the one he had just left. But his eye traveled over the illuminated pane with unseeing preoccupation. He walked rapidly, and with the undeviating glance of inward reflection. Once he stopped at a corner lamp and looked at his watch. Then he hastened his steps, and a few blocks farther on boarded a cross-town car.

The part of the city toward which he was going was of a very different aspect and period. His car passed from the quiet gentility of the West Side toward the hum and glare of the business quarter. It swept him through streets full of the rank and ugly sidewalk life of a great city after dark to where Market Street, the town’s main artery, throbbed and roared with the traffic of the night.

The line he had taken reached its terminus here, and he alighted, made his way through the crowd and clangor of the wide thoroughfare, and plunged into the streets beyond.