Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its CureBall, Eustace Hale
General
Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure
Ball, Eustace Hale
Crime -- Fiction
The girl did not telephone as Burke had expected her to do, according
to the general custom where switchboard girls send in announcement of
callers to private offices.
Instead she removed the headgear of the receiver and rose. She went
inside the door at her back and closed it after her.
"Well, that's some service," thought Burke. "I wonder why she's so
active after indifference?"
She returned before he had a chance to ruminate further.
"You can go right in, sir," she said.
As she sat down she watched him from the corner of her eye. Burke
could not help but wonder at the tense interest in his presence, but
dismissed the thought as he entered the room, and beheld the president
of the Purity League.
William Trubus was seated at a broad mahogany desk, while before him
was spread a large, old-fashioned family Bible. He held in his left
hand a cracker, which he was munching daintily, as he read in an
abstracted manner from the page before him. In his right hand was a
glass containing a red liquid, which Burke at first sight supposed was
wine. He was soon to be undeceived.
He stood a full minute while the president of the League mumbled to
himself as he perused the Sacred Writ. Bobbie was thus enabled to get
a clear view of the philanthropist's profile, and to study the great
man from a good point of vantage.
Trubus was rotund. His cheeks were rosy evidences of good health, good
meals and freedom from anxiety as to where those good meals were to
come from. His forehead was round, and being partially bald, gave an
appearance of exaggerated intellectuality.
His nose was that of a Roman centurion--bold, cruel as a hawk's beak,
strong-nostriled as a wolf's muzzle. His firm white teeth, as they
crunched on the cracker suggested, even stronger, the semblance to a
carnivorous animal of prey. A benevolent-looking pair of gold-rimmed
glasses sat astride that nose, but Burke noticed that, oddly enough,
Trubus did not need them for his reading, nor later when he turned to
look at the young officer.
The plump face was adorned with the conventional "mutton-chop" whiskers
which are so generally associated in one's mental picture of bankers,
bishops and reformers. The whiskers were so resolutely black, that
Burke felt sure they must have been dyed, for Trubus' plump hands, with
their wrinkles and yellow blotches, evidenced that the philanthropist
must have passed the three-score milestone of time.
The white gaiters, the somber black of his well-fitting broadcloth coat
of ministerial cut, the sanctified, studied manner of the man's pose
gave Burke an almost indefinable feeling that before him sat a cleverly
"made-up" actor, not a sincere, natural man of benevolent activities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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