“It will that!” exclaimed the aged mail clerk. “Even thrilling, you might say.
“That little one,” he went on, after ten seconds of silence, “is medicine, some sort of antitoxin, I think the man said. It’s for a very sick child, a beautiful little girl, five years old, a college professor’s daughter. She might die if you failed to go through.
“But there now!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps I’ve told you too much. It may bother you, make you unsteady.”
“It won’t,” said Curlie with assurance. “My mind doesn’t work that way. Been tried before. Added responsibility steadies me.”
“That’s the way to be. It’s the sign of a healthy mind in a healthy body. These boys that smoke a cigaret every four minutes, now. They’re not like that.”
“But tell me about that one.” Curlie pointed to the largest of the three packages.
“Worth forty thousand dollars.” The gray old clerk slid the package into the sack.
“Forty thous—”
“What the man said. Don’t doubt it. See who it’s for? Fritz Lieber. You know who that is.”
“The greatest living violinist.”