Читать книгу The Saint of the Speedway онлайн

60 страница из 87

Then she looked straight into the man’s dark eyes while she went on speaking to her mother.

“It’s a real tough proposition,” she said slowly, and with all the biting emphasis she could fling into the words. “It’s so tough I feel like telling Booker the things a girl ’ud hate to say. The block is worth ten thousand dollars on the market to-day, which means eight thousand dollars to him, and he wants to hand you two thousand dollars for it. Are you going to take the money or starve—which is Booker’s pleasant alternative? I guess we need to decide right away.”

“Ther’s no need for a decision on those figgers, Miss Claire,” Jake said quickly, his usually impassive face flushing under the sting of this beautiful girl’s words.

“How d’you mean?”

Claire’s demand came sharply. It came in that startled fashion which suggested apprehension lest Booker had withdrawn even his usurious offer.

Jake’s flush had faded out. He stood just within the doorway, a curiously ungainly figure in his simple city tweed suit which seemed to belong to another world than that of this primitive log home built by folks who had lived their lives in the golden wilderness of the North. His fine eyes were smiling kindly in the manner of one who feels himself to be something in the nature of a ministering, beneficent angel rather than the executioner of the will of an unscrupulous usurer.