“They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for your supper and carfare back here.”
He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want to have anything to do with this.
Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my fear of being for some unfathomable reason stopped by a police officer and apprehended. Why should I be stopped? Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas?
The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly lit thoroughfare, was one of those four-storey stuccos at least a century old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr Sprovis, who occupied the basement, had one ear distinctly larger than the other, an anomaly I could not help attributing to a trick of constantly pulling on the lobe. He, like the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore the Grand Army beard.
“I had to come instead of Pon—” “No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.”
“All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I slipped the strap of the feedbag over the horse’s ear and started toward Eighth Avenue.
“Hey! Where you going?”
“To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?”