"I'll smash Boom yet," he said, with sudden savagery.
"Nothing else?" I asked.
"We got to keep going. There's a scare on. Did you notice the rooms?
Half the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they
touch it up!... They didn't used to touch things up! Now they put in
character touches--insulting you. Don't know what journalism's coming
to. It's all Boom's doing."
He cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour.
"Well," said I, "what can he do?"
"Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been
handling a lot of money--and he tightens us up."
"We're sound?"
"Oh, we're sound, George. Trust me for that! But all the same--There's
such a lot of imagination in these things.... We're sound enough. That's
not it."
He blew. "Damn Boom!" he said, and his eyes over his glasses met mine
defiantly.
"We can't, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop expenditure?"
"Where?"
"Well,--Crest Hill"
"What!" he shouted. "Me stop Crest Hill for Boom!" He waved a fist as if
to hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty.
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