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Full text of "To Have And Have Not"

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HARRY MORGAN-WINTER
clear coldness always that had, in the old days, been
an after effect. And he lay now, with no kindly
blurring, denied all that chemical courage that had
soothed his mind and warmed his heart for so many
years, and wondered what the department had,
what they had found and what they would twist,
what they would accept as normal and what they
would insist was evasion; and he was not afraid of
them, but only hated them and the power they would
use so insolently that all his own, hard, small, tough
and lasting insolence, the one permanent thing he
had gained and that was truly valid, would be drilled
through, and, if he were ever made afraid, shattered.
He did not think in any abstractions, but in deals,
in sales, in transfers and in gifts. He thought in
shares, in bales, in thousands of bushels, in options,
holding companies, trusts, and subsidiary corpora-
tions, and as he went over it he knew they had plenty,
enough so he would have no peace for years. If they
would not compromise it would be very bad. In the
old days he would not have worried, but the fighting
part of him was tired now, along with the other part,
and he was alone in all of this now and he lay on the
big, wide, old bed and could neither read nor sleep.
His wife had divorced him ten years before after
twenty years of keeping up appearances, and he had
never missed her nor had he ever loved her. He had
Started with her money and she had borne him two
male children, both of whom, like their mother,
were fools. He had treated her well until the money
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