Horace was a bit disconcerted. He knew his accounts were in order and accurate to the last penny. He had nothing to fear on that score. Nevertheless, he didn't like the way the man stared at him.
"If he has something to say to me," thought Horace, "why does he say it with glowers?"
He would have asked the starer what the devil he was looking at, but Horace was incapable of incivility. He began nervously to total up a column of figures and was not a little upset to find that under the cold gaze he had made his first mistake in addition since the spring of '98. He cast a furtive glance or two through the steel netting at the stranger outside, who continued to focus a pair of prominent blue eyes on the self-conscious cashier. Horace couldn't have explained why those particular eyes rattled him; some mysterious power—black art perhaps.
The staring man was quite bald, and his head, shaped like a pineapple cheese, had been polished until it seemed almost to glitter in the September sun. The eyes, light blue and bulgy, reminded Horace of poached eggs left out in the cold for a week. They had also a certain fishy quality; impassive, yet hungry, like a shark's. Without being actually fat, the mysterious starer had the appearance of being plump and soft; perhaps it was the way he clasped two small, perfectly manicured hands over a perceptible rotundity at his middle, an unexpected protuberance, as if he were attempting to conceal a honeydew melon under his vest.
Horace Nimms did his best to concentrate on the little columns of figures he was so fond of drilling and parading, but his glance strayed, almost against his will, to the bald-headed man with the fishy blue eyes, who continued to fasten on Horace the glance a python aims at a rabbit before he bolts him.
At length, after half an hour, Horace could stand it no longer. He addressed the stranger politely.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Horace with his avuncular smile.
The starer, without once taking his eyes off Horace, rose, advanced to the little window and thrust through it an oversized card.
"You may go on with your work," he said, "just as if you were not under observation. I am here under Mr. Hammer's orders."
His voice was peculiar—a nasal purr.