The Project Gutenberg EBook of A People's Man, by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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Title: A People's Man

Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim

Release Date: December 10, 2005 [EBook #17272]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A PEOPLE'S MAN

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

CHAPTER I

"Maraton has come! Maraton! Maraton is here!"

Across Soho, threading his way with devilish ingenuity through mazes of
narrow streets, scattering with his hooter little groups of gibbering,
swarthy foreigners, Aaron Thurnbrein, bent double over his ancient
bicycle, sped on his way towards the Commercial Road and eastwards.
With narrow cheeks smeared with dust, yellow teeth showing behind his
parted lips, through which the muttered words came with uneven
vehemence, ragged clothes, a ragged handkerchief around his neck, a
greasy cap upon his head--this messenger, charged with great tidings,
proclaimed himself, by his visible existence, one of the submerged
clinging to his last spar, fighting still with hands which beat the air,
yet carrying the undaunted light of battle in his blazing eyes,
deep-sunken, almost cavernous, the last refuge, perhaps, of that ebbing
life. Drops of perspiration were upon his forehead, his breath came
hard and painfully. Before he had reached his destination, one could
almost hear the rattle in his throat. He even staggered as at last he
dropped from his bicycle and, wheeling it across a broad pavement, left
it reclining against a box of apples exposed in front of a small
greengrocer's shop.

The neighbourhood was ugly and dirty, the shop was ugly and dirty. The
interior into which he passed was dark, odoriferous, bare of stock,
poverty-smitten. A woman, lean, hard-featured, with thin grey hair
disordered and unkempt, looked up quickly at his coming and as quickly
down again. Her face was perhaps too lifeless to express any emotion
whatsoever, but there might have been a shade of disappointment in the
swift withdrawal of her gaze. A customer would have been next door to a
miracle, but hope dies hard.

"You!" she muttered. "What are you bothering about?"

"I wan