But to Thorpe the journey seemed short enough--almost
too short. The conversation interested him not at all;
if he had ever known the Southern lines apart, they were
all one to him now. He looked out of the window,
and could have sworn that he thought of nothing but the
visit from which he was returning.
When he alighted at Cannon Street, however, it was
to discover that his mind was full of a large, new,
carefully-prepared project. It came to him, ready-made and
practically complete, as he stood on the platform,
superintending the porter's efforts to find his bags.
He turned it over and over in his thoughts, in the hansom,
more to familiarize himself with its details than to add
to them. He left the cab to wait for him at the mouth
of a little alley which delves its way into Old Broad
Street through towering walls of commercial buildings,
old and new.
Colin Semple was happily in his office--a congeries of small,
huddled rooms, dry and dirty with age, which had a doorway
of its own in a corner of the court--and Thorpe pushed on to his
room at the end like one who is assured of both his way and his welcome.
The broker was standing beside a desk, dictating a letter
to a clerk who sat at it, and with only a nod to Thorpe
he proceeded to finish this task. He looked more than
once at his visitor as he did so, in a preoccupied,
impersonal way.
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