Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/214

 and sinews like the strings of a double bass. The right hand ever hovers near the lever. His arms are covered with black, oily smears; drops of sweat are on his forehead and run down his cheeks in rivulets. Perhaps it is for this reason that his companions have called him ‘spattered’ Kuba, or it may be because of the freckles with which his plain, red-bearded face is sprinkled; they are as large as a threepenny piece.

His absorption in his work is, however, only apparent. His thoughts are flying, perhaps not as fast as the mad paper-strip in front of him, yet in the course of the two hours since he has been standing there, he has been totting them up one by one, and the sum-total which he has drawn in the end is so fearful that it scares him; but not a single movement betrays what he is thinking.

The sum-total is that he is going to kill somebody to-night. He can see his victim every time he looks up. The head, covered with a silk skull-cap, is just visible between the framework and the cylinder, bending now over the indicator, now over the tablet on which he enters the number of copies which have passed through. He is the overseer in charge, and Kuba is going to kill him to-night.