United States or Qatar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Again I cursed all the poets of England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the muttered song through a City telephone in the busiest part of the day.
On a shelf and in a wooden bowl were packages of bank-notes and rolls of gold that he had seen the evening when the bank-clerk came. Roughly, without counting; he thrust them into his pocket, and without closing the safe, he ran to the front door, taking care not to step in the streams of blood, which, on the sloping tiled floor, ran toward this door. The time was short.
"He's all right," I heard the teller say as I went out, and understood that the bank-clerk had assured Trego that my character was good enough for him to be friendly with me on the passage to Hong-Kong. As we swung out of Calle San Fernando I saw the Kut Sang tied up at the embankment of the Pasig River, with the Blue Peter at her foremast and heavy black smoke pouring from her funnel.
On a shelf and in a wooden bowl were packages of bank-notes and rolls of gold that he had seen the evening when the bank-clerk came. Roughly, without counting; he thrust them into his pocket, and without closing the safe, he ran to the front door, taking care not to step in the streams of blood, which, on the sloping tiled floor, ran toward this door. The time was short.
Thus, he has sent me into the City to do the hard-working, bank-clerk act, but at the same time he is allowing me just as large an allowance as he would have given me if I had gone to the 'Varsity. Moreover, while I was still at Eton he put my name up for his clubs, the Senior Conservative among others.
He's the bank-clerk and a dude. He gives his cuffs a flick, and starts in to make things jolly all round by telling a story about a man he knows named Wotherspoon. Jerry fixes him with his eye, and, half-way through, interrupts. "That waistcoat of yours is fierce," he says. "Pardon?" says Ralph. "That waistcoat of yours," says Jerry. "It hurts me eyes. It's like an electric sign."
Still it was necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of Charlie's thoughts. "Let's make a bargain. I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said. Charlie became a bank-clerk at once. "Oh, that's impossible. Between two pals, you know, if I may call you so, and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion if it's any use to you. I've heaps more."
When his wife ventured to point out the danger he retorted, "If you say another word I will cut your throat." The following night as he was returning from a visit to the widow, a dagger was sheathed in his heart, and Pietro's amorous race was run. Such was the end of the bank-clerk and his eleventh-hour glories and love adventures.
Did they think that such a man was to be overthrown by a breath of air? By a girl, a bank-clerk, and a shyster lawyer? They would find their case difficult to prove in court. He did not believe they COULD prove it.
Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she had said to him, 'There will be no dinner to-day, he would only have looked up from his book to reply, 'All right, my dear, it is of no consequence. In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town, he left one restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied, because the waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying what he would have to eat.
Word Of The Day