Just then something caught his eye and he stopped motionless on the sidewalk.
On the opposite side of the street (the river side) as though crowded off Front Street by its more pretentious neighbors, was the office of a shipping firm. It was in a low brick building, dingy and dirty as were the structures about it, and a much battered sign over the door read:
ADONIRAM PEPPER & CO.,
SHIPPING MERCHANTS.
The name was what attracted Brandon’s attention first. He had heard his father speak of it and of the man who was “Adoniram Pepper & Co.,” and from his description he had a desire to see this eccentric personage.
Perhaps, also, Mr. Pepper would know the locality of the New England Hotel, and therefore Brandon crossed the street and entered the dingy little front office.
On a high stool by a high desk just beside the window, sat a man with a wonderful development of leg, a terrific shock of the reddest hair imaginable, and a shrewd, lean face, lit up by sharp, foxy eyes. His face was smoothly shaven and the yellow skin was covered with innumerable wrinkles like cracks in the cheeks of a wax doll; but whether this individual was twenty-five, or fifty-five, Brandon was unable to guess.
The man (a clerk, presumably) looked up with a snarl at Brandon’s appearance.
“Well, what do you want?” he demanded.
“Is the firm in?” asked Don, almost laughing in the other’s face, for the red haired clerk had a huge daub of ink on the bridge of his nose and another on his shirt front.
“I’m the firm just now,” declared the man, glowering at him as though he was a South Sea Islander with cannibalistic tendencies.