Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

After a month in his employ, seeing him at the wharf building two or three times a week on my visits for instructions, reports, and pay, I knew him no better than on that first afternoon. In their own way his defence barriers were as good as mine.

He told me between small shut-mouthed yawns that Timmie and Conker weren’t coming, they were due for a few days leave. He had brought two men who obligingly substituted on such occasions and he was sure I would do a good job with them instead. He had brought them, he explained, because public transport wasn’t geared to five o’clock rendezvous[74 - rendezvous – (фр.

While he spoke the front passenger climbed out of his car.

�Billy Watkins,’ Yardman said casually, nodding between us.

�Good-morning, Lord Grey,’ Billy said. He was about nineteen, very slender, with round cold blue eyes.

�Henry,’ I said automatically. The job was impossible on any other terms and these were in any case what I preferred.

Billy looked at me with eyes wide, blank, and insolent. He spaced his words, bit them out and hammered them down.

�Good. Morning. Lord. Grey.’

�Good-morning then, Mr Watkins.’

His eyes flickered sharply and went back to their wide stare. If he expected any placatory soft soaping from me[75 - expected any placatory soft soaping from me – (разг.) ожидал, что я буду лебезить и заискивать перед ним], he could think again.

Yardman saw the instant antagonism and it annoyed him.

�I warned you, Billy,’ he began swiftly, and then as quickly stopped. �You won’t, I am sure, my dear boy,’ he said to me gently, �allow any personal… er… clash of temperaments to interfere with the safe passage of your valuable cargo.’

�No,’ I agreed.

He smiled, showing his greyish regular dentures back to the molars. I wondered idly why, if he could afford such a car, he didn’t invest in more natural-looking teeth.

�Right then,’ he said in brisk satisfaction. �Let’s get on.’

The third man levered himself laboriously out of the car. His trouble stemmed from a paunch which would have done a pregnant mother of twins proud. About him flapped a brown store-man’s overall which wouldn’t do up by six inches[76 - which wouldn’t do up by six inches – (разг.