Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/264

252 questions. How much did you get out of the 'clean-up'?" "About two thousand," Sims answered irritably. "Is there anything else you want to know?" There was not. He had the answers to his four queries. "I guess not," he said. "No."

"Will you go away, then, and leave me alone?"

Colburn rose, feeling in his pocket for his package of granulated tobacco. "Have a smoke?" he asked. Sims did not even look up. Colburn nodded, to himself, and went away to the smoking compartment.

The man's story had no news value; and no other value interested Colburn. He consulted his watch; it was 7.57. He consulted the railroad time-table; the first stop was Littleton, at. 8.09. He found that a train returning to Denver would pass through Littleton at 9.22; and it would get him back to Denver at 9.45. Good. If there was a night-game at the club—

He settled himself in his seat, with the newspaper man's ability to dismiss the troubles of the outside world from his mind and wait as patiently as an old dog for the next whistle of events. He would return from wiring the story of a hanging, with just such placidity. His sympathies had been only momentarily stirred. And he had no literary interest in the psychology of the story and no feeling for its merely human appeal.

When the train stopped at Littleton, he got out, and stood facing the little brick station while he reflected that from 8.09 to 9.22 would be a wait of one hour and thirteen minutes. He decided to go back by trolley.