Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/84

 agreed to whereby Sam was to continue the business until the settlement of the estate, thereafter to buy the business at the price set at an appraisal by an expert.

Outside the court house Eddie Hughes waited for him with the limousine, impassive, dead to his surroundings, seemingly, yet seeing everything that might affect him or his master in any way. The afternoon had drawn to a close with the ending of the inquiry into the death of Matthew Masterson and the streets were rapidly filling with the advance guard of the homeward bound workers.

Above the boom of the great city downtown, above the noise and the crash of human industry, loomed the stark, silent shaft of the Woolworth Building, dwarfing everything in its vicinity, making the scurrying humans resemble the little ants which they really were, showing by the mere fact of its being how small human lives and human affairs were. It was a magnificent gesture of superiority, reflected Val, as he stepped towards his car.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Pomeroy,” said a sibilant voice at his elbow, ingratiatingly close.

Val whirled. He disliked that voice even before he saw the speaker, even before he recognized him.

It was the heavy, sinister appearing, armless man of unpleasant memory. He lounged, as Val had seen him before, his hands in his pockets, bulking huge over everybody in the neighborhood but Val, who was rather something of a human monolith himself. He must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, yet he was not stocky—he was built in proportion to his height, and he carried his weight with the graceful ease of a mountain cat, swinging easily on his toes.

On the left side of his face, extending across his