Durkin did not wait for the gong to sound. He hurried round to Robinson & Little’s offices, racing past disheveled men as excited as himself.
Neither member of the distraught firm of Robinson & Little was to be seen. But a senior clerk, with a pale face and a wilted collar, quickly and nonchalantly counted Durkin out his money, after verifying the slip, and speaking a brief word or two with his master over the telephone.
When his brokerage commission had been deducted, Durkin was still able to claim as his own some forty-eight thousand dollars.
It had been a game, for once, worth the candle.
He walked out into the afternoon sunlight, pausing a moment at the doorway to drink in the clear wintry air of the open street. After all, it was worth while to be alive in such a world, with all its stir, with all its—
His line of thought was suddenly disrupted. A tingle of apprehension, minute but immediate, was speeding up and down his backbone.
“That’s your man,” a voice had said from the shadow of the doorway.
Durkin took the two stones steps as one, and, without turning, hurried on. His eyes were half-closed as he went, counting his own quick footfalls and wondering how many of them might safely be taken to mean escape.
He walked blindly, with no sense of direction, each moment demanding of himself if it meant defeat or freedom.
At the twentieth step he felt a hand catch at the slack in his coat sleeve. He jerked a startled and indignant arm forward, but the clutch was one of steel.