This receipt is still good for one first-class funeral—and it is negotiable.
Reedy felt all the sneer go out of his lips and a sort of coldness steal along his sweaty skin. Underneath this writing was another line:
Transferred for value received to Reedy Jenkins. BOB ROGEEN.
CHAPTER XIV
It was five minutes after Bob Rogeen had gone out of the door before Reedy Jenkins stirred in his chair. Then he gave his head a vicious jerk and swiped the angling wisp of hair back from his forehead.
"Oh, hell! He can't bluff me."
He sat gritting his teeth, remembering the insulting retorts he might have made, slapped his thigh a whack with his open hand in vexation that he had not made them; got up and walked the floor.
No, he was not afraid of Rogeen, not by a damned sight. Afraid of a twenty-dollar hardware clerk? Not much! He would show him he had struck the wrong town and the wrong man for his cheap bluffs. And yet Reedy kept remembering a certain expression in Rogeen's eye, a certain taut look in his muscles. Of course a man of Reedy's reputation did not want to be mixed up in any brawls. Whatever was done, should be done smoothly—and safely.
He telephoned for Madrigal, the Mexican Jew. Madrigal could manage it.