She had died a few months after her husband's release.
Melinoff, if he had had no other virtue, had at least loved his wife,
and the Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was
no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and
grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop,
apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness
was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which
he had conducted his business.
A smile, half grim, half whimsical, flickered across Jimmie Dale's lips.
There were strange lives, strange undercurrents, always, ceaselessly, at
work here in the underworld, here where the grist from the human mill
found its place. Melinoff, the Pippin, each of those whirling figures
out there on the floor, each of those men and women whose laughter rose
raucously from the tables, or whose whisperings, as heads were lowered
and held close together, seemed an unsavoury, vicious thing, had known a
strange and tortuous path; yet strangest, most tortuous of them all,
was--his own!
His fingers, as he thrust the Pippin's note into the side pocket of his
coat, touched the torn fragments of another note, tiny little particles
of paper, torn over and over again into fine and minute shreds--the
Tocsin's note--the note that seemed suddenly to have changed all his
life.
Pages:
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346