CHAPTER XXIV
AN ANSWERED QUESTION
Trucks, low sleds, and huge wagons emerged in a steady stream from lanes leading down to the wharves, where ships great and small lay moored. Rumbling out of these lanes with much noise and cracking of whips from impatient drivers, these heavy vehicles were a constant menace to unwary passers-by.
Dr. Camperdown having relapsed into a reflective mood had a number of narrow escapes. Jumping aside just in time, he went on his way, brushing heedlessly along by sailors, hoarse-voiced captains of fishing craft who wore bright-colored scarfs around their throats, the few women who appeared in the street, and an occasional shivering child, running with a few cents in its hand to the nearest eating-place for something to supplement a late breakfast.
At frequent intervals he passed by clothing shops, whose dangling garments of oilskin, fur rugs, and woolen wraps formed numerous little arbors in front of their entrance doors. Once a swinging line of rough socks caught in his cap, was impatiently swept aside, and fell to the ice and snow on the pavement. The irate shopkeeper rushed out, and sent a volley of bad language after him, which Camperdown listened to complacently, and then strode on without replying.
At last he arrived in front of the place he sought—a substantial, brick building with Armour & Son, Cobequid Warehouse, in gilt letters across its wide archway.
He wished to go down the wharf to Mr. Armour’s office, and passing under the heads of a pair of mules that were dragging a load of barrels of flour out into the street, he followed a narrow, plank walk at the side of the building, occasionally glancing up as he did so at the rows of barred, prison-like windows above him.
“A more ponderous erection this, than the first one,” he said half aloud. “Wonder how long it will stand? ’Till after poor Stanton is in his grave probably;” and opening a door before him, he stepped into a small passage which gave private entrance to Mr. Armour’s office.
A tap at the door and he was permitted to enter by a curt, “Come in.”
In a good-sized room of moderate height sat the virtual head of the Armour firm, a pen between his fingers, his eye engaged in running up and down the columns of an account book that he held propped up before him.
The doors of the massive safes sunk into the wall, stood half open; inside could be seen in compartments, filed papers, rows of books, and small padlocked boxes. On the wall hung calendars, the signal service system of the port of Halifax, a map of Nova Scotia, and various memoranda relating to the business.