“I want to get———” the last word trailed off into tremulous, quavering incoherency.
“You want to get what?” growled Regan. “Don’t sputter as though you’d swallowed your teeth. What is it you want to get?”
“Firing,” blurted Spitzer after a desperate struggle.
Regan gasped for his breath. Spitzer! SPITZER—in a cab! He couldn’t have heard straight.
“Say it again,” whispered the master mechanic.
“Firing,” repeated Spitzer, with more confidence now that the plunge was taken.
“Yes,” said Regan weakly to himself. “That’s it. I got it right—firing! He wants to get firing!”
“I—I can do it,” faltered Spitzer. “I got to.”
“Eh? What’s that?” said Regan. “You got to? Say, you, Spitzer, what the devil’s the matter with you anyway?”
Spitzer wriggled like a worm on a hook, and his face went the color of a semaphore arm—a deep red one. Spitzer was suffering acutely.