Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Cabbages and Kings by O. Henry
page 58 of 237 (24%)

The valise opened wide to a powerful, sidelong wrench. Goodwin
dragged out two or three articles of clothing, exposing the bulk of
its contents--package after package of tightly packed United States
bank and treasury notes of large denomination. Reckoning from the
high figures written upon the paper bands that bound them, the total
must have come closely upon the hundred thousand mark.

Goodwin glanced swiftly at the woman, and saw, with surprise and
a thrill of pleasure that he wondered at, that she had experienced
an unmistakeable shock. Her eyes grew wide, she gasped, and leaned
heavily against the table. She had been ignorant, then, he inferred,
that her companion had looted the government treasury. But why,
he angrily asked himself, should he be so well pleased to think this
wandering and unscrupulous singer not so black as report had painted
her?

A noise in the other room startled them both. The door swung open,
and a tall, elderly, dark complexioned man, recently shaven, hurried
into the room.

All the pictures of President Miraflores represent him as the
possessor of a luxuriant supply of dark and carefully tended whiskers;
but the story of the barber, Esteban, had prepared Goodwin for
the change.

The man stumbled in from the dark room, his eyes blinking at the
lamplight, and heavy from sleep.

"What does this mean?" he demanded in excellent English, with a keen
DigitalOcean Referral Badge