He gave me an address on Twenty-Sixth Street. “Sprovis is the name.” “All right,” I said as stolidly as I could. “Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feedbag in the van; that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.” “Yes.” “They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for your supper and carfare back here.” He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want to have anything to do with this. Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my fear of being for some unfathomable reason stopped by a police officer and apprehended. Why should I be stopped? Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas? The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly lit thoroughfare, was one of those four-storey stuccos at least a century old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr Sprovis, who occupied the basement, had one ear distinctly larger than the other, an anomaly I could not help attributing to a trick of constantly pulling on the lobe. He, like the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore the Grand Army beard. “I had to come instead of Pon—” “No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.” “All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.” “Yeah, yeah.” I slipped the strap of the feedbag over the horse’s ear and started toward Eighth Avenue. “Hey! Where you going?” “To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?” I felt him peering suspiciously at me. “Guess not. But don’t keep us waiting, see? We’ll be ready to go in twenty minutes.” I did not like Mr Sprovis. In the automatic lunchroom where the dishes were delivered by a clever clockwork device as coins were deposited in the right slots, I gorged on fish and potatoes, but my pleasure at getting away for once from the unvarying bread and heart was spoiled by the thought of him. And I was at best no more than half through with the night’s adventure. What freight Sprovis and his companions were now loading in the van I had no idea. Except that it was nothing innocent. When I turned the corner into Twenty-Sixth Street again, the shadowy mass of the horse and van was gone from its place by the curb. Alarmed, I broke into a run and discovered it turning in the middle of the block. I jumped and caught hold of the dash, pulling myself aboard. “What’s the idea?” A fist caught me in the shoulder, almost knocking me back into the street. Zigzags of shock ran down my arm, terminating in numbing pain. Desperately I clung to the dash. “Hold it,” someone rumbled; “it’s the punk who came with. Let him in.” Another voice, evidently belonging to the man who’d hit me, admonished, “Want to watch yourself, chum. Not go jumping like that without warning. I might of stuck a shiv in your ribs instead of my hand.”