Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/233

Rh “Nothin' to talk about.”

There might have been a double meaning in this remark, and Harry looked twice to make sure that there was no guile.

“Well, here we are.” He threw open a door which revealed a bald-headed clerk seated at a desk in a little bare room. “Billy, here's a gent that cracked it the first whack and started his gun from the leather, by God. He”

“Jest kindly close the door, Harry,” said Billy. “Step in, partner. Gimme your name?”

The door closed on the discomfited Harry, and “Joe Cumber” stood close to it, apparently driven to shrinking into the wall in his embarrassment, but while he stood there his hand fumbled behind him and turned the key in the lock, and then extracted it.

“My name's Joe Cumber.”

“Joe Cumber,”—this while inscribing it.

“Age?”

“About thirty-two, maybe.”

“Don't you know?”

“I don't exactly.”

His eyes were as vague as his words, gentle, and smiling.

“Thirty-two?” said Billy sharply. “You look more like twenty-five to me. S'pose we split the difference, eh?”

And with a grin he wrote: “Age twenty-two or three.”