Whaddya know?
You working here?”
Ratterer, who (like Clyde) had for the moment quite forgotten the troublesome secret which lay between them, added:
“That’s right.
Surest thing you know.
Been here for nearly a year, now.”
Then with a sudden pull at Clyde’s arm, as much as to say, “Silence!” he drew Clyde to one side, out of the hearing of the youth to whom he had been talking as Clyde came in, and added:
“Ssh!
I’m working here under my own name, but I’d rather not let ’em know I’m from K. C., see.
I’m supposed to be from Cleveland.”
And with that he once more pressed Clyde’s arm genially and looked him over.
And Clyde, equally moved, added:
“Sure.
That’s all right.
I’m glad you were able to connect.
My name’s Tenet, Harry Tenet. Don’t forget that.”
And both were radiantly happy because of old times’ sake.
But Ratterer, noticing Clyde’s delivery uniform, observed:
“Driving a delivery, eh?
Gee, that’s funny.
You driving a delivery.
Imagine.
That kills me.
What do you want to do that for?”
Then seeing from Clyde’s expression that his reference to his present position might not be the most pleasing thing in the world, since Clyde at once observed:
“Well, I’ve been up against it, sorta,” he added:
“But say, I want to see you.
Where are you living?” (Clyde told him.)
“That’s all right. I get off here at six.
Why not drop around after you’re through work. Or, I’ll tell you — suppose we meet at — well, how about Henrici’s on Randolph Street? Is that all right?
At seven, say.
I get off at six and I can be over there by then if you can.”
Clyde, who was happy to the point of ecstasy in meeting Ratterer again, nodded a cheerful assent.
He boarded his wagon and continued his deliveries, yet for the rest of the afternoon his mind was on this approaching meeting with Ratterer.
And at five-thirty he hurried to his barn and then to his boarding house on the west side, where he donned his street clothes, then hastened to Henrici’s.
He had not been standing on the corner a minute before Ratterer appeared, very genial and friendly and dressed, if anything, more neatly than ever.
“Gee, it’s good to have a look at you, old socks!” he began.
“Do you know you’re the only one of that bunch that I’ve seen since I left K. C.?
That’s right.
My sister wrote me after we left home that no one seemed to know what became of either Higby or Heggie, or you, either.
They sent that fellow Sparser up for a year — did you hear that?
Tough, eh?
But not so much for killing the little girl, but for taking the car and running it without a license and not stopping when signaled.
That’s what they got him for.
But say,”— he lowered his voice most significantly at this point — “we’da got that if they’d got us.
Oh, gee, I was scared.
And run?”
And once more he began to laugh, but rather hysterically at that.
“What a wallop, eh? An’ us leavin’ him and that girl in the car. Oh, say.
Tough, what?