Marconi was no longer a man in love or one of the few people whom Ross considered to be wholly alive—like him. He was a hard-eyed little stranger with a stubborn mouth and an ingratiating veneer. In short he was again a trader, and a good one.
“I’ll tell you anything I know,” Marconi declared positively, and insincerely. “Tend to that fellow first though, will you?” He pointed to a uniformed Yards messenger whose eye had just alighted on Ross. The man threaded his way, stumbling, through the tables and laid a sealed envelope down in the puddle left by Ross’s drink.
“Sorry, sir,” he said crisply, wiped off the envelope with his handkerchief and, for lagniappe, wiped the puddle off the table into Ross’s lap.
Speechless, Ross signed for the envelope on a red-tabbed slip marked URGENT * PRI
