The Tiger in the Well Read Online Free PDF Page A

Goldberg struck a match and relit his cigar before stabbing the pen at the ink and taking up his sentence from where he'd left off.
    The room was so crowded and noisy that no one noticed the door open and a slender figure edge through. The red-bearded young man from the ship, rucksack in his arms, gazed around, blinking with smarting eyes through the reek of smoke. He asked a question of the man nearest to him and looked where he pointed, and then made his way through
    I

    the crowded chairs to the table where Goldberg was sitting. Goldberg, still furiously scribbling, took no notice.
    Finally the young man coughed and said, "Comrade Goldberg.?"
    "Yes.'"' said Goldberg, without looking up.
    "My name is Jacob Liebermann, comrade. I arrived in London only today. I—"
    "Liebermann! Ah, man, it's good to meet you! That article in the Arbeiter Freind ... a delightful piece of writing! Come and sit down."
    He shook hands and pulled out a chair. Liebermann sat down, trying to conceal the emotion in his face. To have been read and praised by the great Daniel Goldberg! But Goldberg was looking at him more closely now, and he put the cigar aside.
    "You're not well," he said quietly. "What is \x?. Consumption?"
    Liebermann nodded. He was nearly at the end of his strength.
    "All right, let's get out of this smoky place. These people will be arguing till midnight," said Goldberg. "Come with me. I've got a room upstairs. Give me your rucksack."
    He gathered up all his papers, slung the rucksack over his shoulder, capped the ink and put it in his pocket, and shoved his way briskly through the crowd. Liebermann followed, sagging with weariness.
    "That job I was doing ..." Liebermann said as they made their way upstairs. "Larousse gave me your message. . . . After I left Berlin, I went to Latvia. . . . I've got some news. ..."
    "I remember. Good. Tell me, then."
    "Comrade Goldberg, there's a conspiracy against the Jews. There are hundreds of Jews, maybe thousands, gathered at the frontiers, with no money, no papers. . . . Those who do have tickets crowd into the railway station and the seaports—"
    "Yes. I know all that. What's the news.?"

    "I was coming to that."
    "Well, come to it sooner. That was the one trouble with your banking piece, if you'll let me say so; you didn't begin it quickly enough. Give the whole story in the first sentence. Argument is different, essays are different, travel sketches and that kind of thing are different, but to tell a news story you give it in the first sentence. The rest is enlargement, background, explanation, development—^you can throw it away if you want. I know all that stuff about frontiers and passports and no money. Give me the story now in one sentence."
    "The man behind it is known as the Tzaddik, and he is on his way to London."
    "That's better. We'll make a journalist of you yet."
    They had arrived outside a door on a tiny second-floor landing. Goldberg opened it and let Liebermann through, and then struck a match to light an oil lamp. Liebermann sank into the nearest chair and coughed. Goldberg looked at him; the feverish cheeks, the bright eyes were alarming. He put down the rucksack, cleared a space among the reference books and government reports for the papers he was carrying, and poured Liebermann a glass of brandy.
    "So, what do you know of this man, the Tzaddik.f*"
    Liebermann took the glass with two hands and sipped, closing his eyes as the liquid warmed his mouth and throat. Goldberg sat at the table.
    "I first heard of him in Riga," Liebermann began. "I was with a comrade who was showing me the office of something called the Aliens' Registry Bureau of the British consulate."
    "No such thing," said Goldberg. "It's a fake." Out came the bottle of ink from his overcoat pocket; out came the pen. He put the papers he'd brought up under a fist-sized stone on the floor, uncapped the ink, and began to write as Liebermann spoke.
    "So I found out. I pretended to be a Russian Jew, wanting to