cuneatic decipherment

[…] punctuated by the roar of great automobiles, overtaking gangsters, the spatter of tommy-guns mowing them down […]

So, for an instant, Anthony stood at Susanna's threshold, looking into her antechamber, breathless almost with his sense of her imminence;--and then the tall flunkey said, in the fastidious accents of flunkeydom, Net et em, sir; and all my hero's high-strung emotion must spend itself in the depositing of a card.

Lemons have a sour taste.