After a prolonged fumbling at a bunch of keys, the watchman fitted one of them into the time register and turned it.
“It’s the age! It’s the age!” he muttered. “They can’t trust a man to make his rounds, so they make him leave his callin’ card with one of these devil’s own machines. Tyranny, I calls it. Nothin’ but tyranny.”
Flash brought the old man out of his reverie by asking him if he could open the door into the photography department.
“And who are you?” Old Herm demanded suspiciously. “What business do you have in the building?”
“I’m Flash Evans, the new photographer. I have some work to do.”
The old man gazed sharply at the boy.
“You don’t look like a photographer to me. No, sir!”
He stared at Flash as if trying to bore a hole through him with his gimlet-like eyes.
“But there’s somethin’ familiar about you,” he said. “What’s your name again?”
“Evans.”