CHAPTER THE FOURTH
HOW I STOLE THE HEAPS OF QUAP FROM MORDET ISLAND
I
"We got to make a fight for it," said my uncle. "We got to face the
music!"
I remember that even at the sight of him I had a sense of impending
calamity. He sat under the electric light with the shadow of his hair
making bars down his face. He looked shrunken, and as though his skin
had suddenly got loose and yellow. The decorations of the room seemed
to have lost freshness, and outside the blinds were up--there was not so
much fog as a dun darkness. One saw the dingy outlines of the chimneys
opposite quite distinctly, and then a sky of such brown as only London
can display.
"I saw a placard," I said: "'More Ponderevity.'"
"That's Boom," he said. "Boom and his damned newspapers. He's trying to
fight me down. Ever since I offered to buy the Daily Decorator he's
been at me. And he thinks consolidating Do Ut cut down the ads. He wants
everything, damn him! He's got no sense of dealing. I'd like to bash his
face!"
"Well," I said, "what's to be done?"
"Keep going," said my uncle.
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