Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

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In one corner is an office quite like a ticket-booth at an athletic field, and behind the narrow window stands a man with an open book before him. His eyes wander ceaselessly over the company, and presently he steps out into the open room. He is making straight for Clark and me; his grease-stained, worn, black suit hanging loose about his wasted figure, a something not unlike a small decanter-stopper glistening on the bosom of his soiled, collarless, white shirt, his singularly repulsive face growing clearer as he comes, the receding forehead and small, weak, close-set piercing eyes, the high cheek-bones and bristling black mustache over a drooping mouth stained with tobacco. He walks straight up to Clark.

“You was here last night?” he asks with rising inflection and a German accent.

“Yes,” says Clark. “I come up to-night to see a fellow I know,” he adds of his own initiative.

“Do you see him?” says the clerk.

“No.”

“Was you and your pal going to take beds?”

“No.”

And in the awkward situation thus created, Clark and I go out once more from the luxury of warmth and shelter.