Читать книгу The Driver онлайн

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On the other side of the room a very large man sat writing at a small, old-fashioned walnut desk with a green-covered floor that pulled out and a solid curved top that opened up or closed down with a rotary motion. That kind of furniture was even then out of style. It is now extinct. It was too ugly to survive in the antique shops.

He went on writing for a minute or two, then turned slowly, looked me through and put out his hand.

“I’m preparing a speech on your subject,” he said.

“Coxeyism?”

“Yes. Your reports were excellent,—very good, indeed.”

As he said this he turned to search for something on his desk.

It is an odd sensation to meet a notorious person at close range for the first time, especially one who has been much caricatured in the newspapers. There is an imaginary man to be got rid of surreptitiously before the real one can be accepted. One feels somehow embarrassed while this act is taking place, with an impulse to apologize for the human fact of its being so much easier on hearsay to believe ill than good of a fellow being whom you do not know.