Lee’s Court House, Virginia.
Mr. Glenn Curtiss,
Hammondsport, N. Y.
Dear Sir.—My order of recent date concerning the purchase of a six-cylinder aeroplane engine is hereby countermanded. Circumstances have arisen that force me to ask you to stop shipment; to wit, I have no money to pay for the engine.
Your obedient servant,
Mortimer Marshall.
Sealing and stamping the note, Morey ordered and drank a five-cent ice cream soda as if to fortify himself, and then, dropping his letter in the postoffice, he mounted the creaking stairs to the office of E. L. Lomax. The door was open, but the place was deserted. A few law books, a typewriter, white with dust, a box of sawdust used as a spittoon, a stove crammed full of paper scraps as if already prepared for the next winter, a disarranged desk and four walls almost completely covered with insurance advertisements, and several brown and cracked maps of Rappahannock County, confronted him.
Morey turned to leave. On the door he saw a scrap of paper which seemed to have been there many days. “Gone out. Back soon,” it read. He turned, sat down and waited. An hour went by and the lawyer did not appear. Morey determined to make some inquiries. As he reached the bottom of the stairs a middle-aged man in a wide black hat and a long coat, who was sitting in the window of the postoffice, rose and greeted him.
“Did you want to see me?” the man asked.
“Are you Mr. Lomax?”
The man, who had a large quid of tobacco in his mouth, of which there were traces on his shirt front, carefully expectorated through a grating on the flag stone sidewalk and waved his hand toward the stairs, on which there were more signs of tobacco.