Another Little Love Affair

by Rex T. Stout

 

Another Little Love Affair

By Rex T. Stout

Author of “Art for Art's Sake,” “A Little Love Affair,” etc.

MR. CHIDDEN had not felt very well that morning. He thought it must be an attack of biliousness. Or was it merely an unusually acute stroke of the gloomy melancholy which he had acquired in twenty years of service as handy man in his sister's rooming house?

Not that he wasted any time arguing the matter with himself. He merely felt that he did not feel well. After breakfast, he had spent an hour sifting the ashes from the furnace. Then he had brought up coal for the kitchen range, swept off the stoop and sidewalk, set out the garbage and ash cans, shined the brass doorknobs and rail, and beat four rugs. These tasks completed, he went in search of his sister to ask for forty cents to buy gas mantles.

“She's upstairs, sewing,” said Minnie, the kitchen girl.

Mr. Chidden mounted two flights and passed down the narrow hall to the rear end, where a door stood half open—the door to his sister's room. In front of it, he paused. There were two reasons for this. He always paused for courage when about to face his sister, even when his errand was perfectly disinterested; but this time his hesitation came partly from surprise. Why did he not hear the sewing machine, with its monotonous, aggressive whir? And whose was the voice—certainly not his sister's—whose unintelligible mumble came vaguely to his ears through the half-open door? Presumably it was some one talking to his sister. Who could it be? For two minutes Mr. Chidden stood motionless, listening and wondering.

And then suddenly came another sound, as the voice halted—the sound of a smacking kiss!

Mr. Chidden gasped with profound amazement. And before he could close his mouth again, he heard the sound of swift footsteps, the door was flung open from within, and a man rushed from the room, dashed to the stairs, and descended, two steps at a time. But, despite the rapidity of his flight, Mr. Chidden recognized him. It was Comicci, the Italian sculptor, who occupied a bedroom studio in the third-floor front.

Mr. Chidden stood for a moment struck dumb, then came to with a start as the street door banged below. Simultaneously came the whir of the sewing machine from within the room. He tiptoed to the stairs and began to descend noiselessly. On the fourth step, he halted and stood still, and finally he turned abruptly, remounted to the landing, walked briskly to the open door, and entered the room.

“Well?” said his sister, stopping the machine to look across at him.

Miss Maria Chidden was a raw-boned, red-faced woman of forty-two, with dim gray eyes, hard cheeks, and shiny skin. Particularly, her face was very red; but, as Mr. Chidden looked at her, after a quick glance around to see if she was alone, it appeared to him that her color was even higher than usual. This, and the fact that there was no one else in the room, pointed to a simple and certain conclusion. Mr. Comicci had kissed her, or attempted to kiss her. But it was inconceivable to Mr. Chidden that any man in the world, for any reason whatever, would kiss his sister Maria. He was as much puzzled as amazed.

“Well?” Miss Maria repeated impatiently.

“I want forty cents for gas mantles,” said Mr. Chidden, from the middle of the room.

Without a word, she arose, unlocked a drawer of a dingy, old-fashioned desk, and took out a big black pocket-book. From this she extracted two quarters, which she handed to her brother. His amazement increased. Never before had she given him one cent over the exact amount required. She must be horribly agitated. She might even——

He cleared his throat, stuck the fifty cents into his pocket, and spoke:

“Also, I want three dollars.”

Miss Chidden paused in the act of returning the pocketbook to the drawer.

“What for?” she demanded.

“For myself.”

“What for?”

“Imperial necessity,” said Mr. Chidden, trying to make a joke of it.

“I suppose it's clothes.”

Her tone was maddening. The flush was leaving her face now, and her lips were straightening out. These ominous signs, and the smart sarcasm of her voice, plunged Mr. Chidden quite suddenly into the depths of exasperated despair. From her appearance of nervous embarrassment, he had thought to take her by surprise and get the three dollars out of her before she realized what she was doing. But he knew that hope was gone as he saw her lips meet in the familiar straight line. Very well, he would fight for it.

“Yes, it's clothes,” he replied, with sudden passion. “Why shouldn't it be? I want three dollars.”

“You can't have it.” Miss Maria returned the pocketbook to the drawer. “And, what's more, you don't need it.”

“No? I don't?” shouted Mr. Chidden, advancing a step and pointing indignantly to a certain portion of his clothing. “Look at that! Just look at it! Perhaps there is men who can wear a pair of pants three years, Maria Chidden, but I'm not one of 'em. It's unwholesome. Give me three dollars.”

For reply, Miss Maria closed and locked the drawer, returned to her chair, inserted the edge of a sheet under the hemmer, and started the machine. Her only audible comment was a grunt as she hitched the chair up closer.

Mr. Chidden choked with the helpless rage of the timid and oppressed.

“That's right!” he yelled. “Shut your mouth and look mad. You can't scare me. I need a pair of pants, and you know it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You've got rich off of this boarding house, and I've slaved for you morning, noon, and night for twenty years, and got nothing. What's three dollars to you? Anyway, I've got it coming to me. I've earned it. Ain't I? Haven't I earned it?”

“Maybe,” was the calm reply. “But you're not going to get it.”

“No? I won't get it? All right! All right, then, I won't get it!”

And Mr. Chidden, tasting defeat, sought for revenge. He tried to think of something to say that would give this tyrant pain. And what he found was:

“What was that little dago doing in here? I saw him come out.”

The machine stopped. Miss Maria arose. Her look was awful. Mr. Chidden met it bravely for three seconds, then began a precipitate retreat toward the door. He was halted by her voice. Any one would have been.

“Robert!”

“Well?” he murmured, turning.

“Let me tell you right now, Mr. Comicci is no dago. He's a gentleman. Dago, indeed! A worthless little thing like you to call him names! And you stand right up and insinuate your own sister! Yes, you did! And if ever I—— Robert! Robert, come back here!”

But the call went unheeded. With his revenge, Mr. Chidden had swiftly flown—into the hall and down three flights of stairs to the cellar. There he halted and seated himself on an old box behind the coal pile. Almost immediately he jumped up again, ran to the cellar door, and bolted it. Then he returned to the box. This was the refuge he always sought when he required solitude. He took a pipe from his pocket, filled it, lit it, and leaned back against the whitewashed wall to puff and think.

First, he thought of pants. For two weeks now he had been screwing up his courage to the point of asking for three dollars—the price of a certain handsome garment displayed in Greenberg's window on Eighth Avenue. And since his need was undeniable, he knew that if he had approached his sister in the proper manner, with a due amount of humility and appeal, he would have been successful. But he had allowed himself to be betrayed by a hasty impulse, and now he would probably have to wait another month.

What had set him off? Oh, yes, the dago. That was funny. Of course he had been mistaken; even a dago would not make love to his sister Maria, who was lean and old and rawboned. But then he had distinctly heard the kiss. What if it had really happened? Mr. Chidden puffed out a long column of smoke, and chuckled to himself. He would give anything to have seen the little dago trying to kiss Maria. For some time he sat smoking and grinning to himself, developing many amusing details of the imagined scene.

Then suddenly he sat up with a quick ejaculation, jerking the pipe from his mouth. By Heaven! He hadn't thought of that! Could it be? Perhaps the little dago wasn't such a fool, after all!

He leaned back against the wall and began to think in earnest, forgetting to smoke. He remained thus for half an hour, silent, motionless, rapt. Then he slowly arose, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and went upstairs to look at the dining-room clock. It said a quarter past eleven, which meant that Miss Maria had left fifteen minutes before on her daily trip to the Eighth Avenue markets.

“Now's my chance!” muttered Mr. Chidden.

He mounted to the second floor and passed to the rear of the hall. The door, behind which he had heard the kiss an hour before, was closed. Getting no answer to his knock, he pushed it open and entered. Leaving the door ajar, he tiptoed across to the old-fashioned desk and raised the lid, disclosing to view an orderly heap of receipts, bills, and other papers, and two medium-sized books bound in imitation leather. He took out one of the latter, laid it on the desk, and opened it.

He was nervous; he kept glancing behind him every second, and his fingers trembled, but he finally found what he wanted on page 47. At the top of the leaf was written: “Giacomo Comicci, came in Sept. 22, third-floor front, $5.00.” Beneath this was a list of dates a week apart, and after each date appeared the entry: “Paid $5.00.” But at March 16th the entries of payments halted, though the dates continued. Mr. Chidden glanced at the calendar on the desk, which displayed in black type: “June 28.” Then he went down the line of dates with his finger, counting.

“By Polly!” he exclaimed aloud, forgetting the danger of his situation. “He hasn't paid a cent for fifteen weeks!”

All was clear. His suspicions were justified. No wonder the little dago was trying to kiss Maria! Then another thought came: Never before had any roomer succeeded in remaining under Maria's roof for more than three consecutive weeks without paying rent, and here—nearly four months! Gradually, reluctantly, Mr. Chidden arrived at the painful conclusion that not only had Mr. Comicci given Maria the kiss, but also that she had been glad to get it.

But he knew his sister Maria. She was a prude if ever there was one. No man—not Don Juan himself—could ever have succeeded in planting the salute of love on her chaste cheek without having first declared the most honorable intentions. By Polly! There could be no doubt of it! The little dago was trying to marry Maria!

Mr. Chidden was thinking fast, but it was some time later, back in the cellar, that he arrived at this startling conclusion. As soon as it entered his mind, it crowded everything else out. He felt himself suddenly confronted by a fearful and wholly unexpected danger. His brain whirled.

True, he had told himself daily for the past twenty years that he was living the life of a slave, and he had made spasmodic and energetic, but fruitless, attempts to get out of it. Handy man in a rooming house is not a position either of honor or of ease, and his sister Maria had taken all the profits. But still the work was not really hard, he never had to worry about anything, he usually got clothes when he had to have them, and he could always squeeze a little spending money out of Maria when his need was urgent. And Maria had saved up something like ten thousand dollars. Not that he wanted or expected her to die, or anything like that; but the fact remained that the ten thousand existed, and that he was her brother, her only living relative.

And now this little dago——

 

About the middle of the afternoon, Mr. Chidden mounted to the third floor and knocked on the door at the front. His was no coward spirit. He had no special design or object; he merely wanted to face the enemy and appraise him. Signor Comicci opened the door.

“I've come to see to the gas,” said Mr. Chidden, entering.

“There is nothing wronga weeth eet,” answered the Italian.

Without bothering to reply, Mr. Chidden got a chair from a corner and carried it to the middle of the floor under the chandelier; then, mounting on it, he proceeded to examine the top of the burner with a singular expression of hostility, due, perhaps, to the fact that every now and then his eyes shifted for a quick glance at the Italian, who stood beside the chair looking up curiously. The look was curious, and nothing more; there was certainly nothing vicious in the face, with its twinkling gray eyes beneath the straggling brown hair. But Mr. Chidden found it evil; and he was on the point of making an ill-natured remark, when it occurred to him that, in the rôle of spy, it is necessary to submerge the violent emotions.

“I guess it's all right,” he said finally, descending from the chair.

Mr. Comicci nodded amiably.

“Gives trouble sometimes,” continued Mr. Chidden. “On account of the mantle. Jets is easy. But I suppose a good light.”

Thus the conversation began; and, despite a certain wary hesitancy of manner, Mr. Comicci entered into it with zest and affability. Within three minutes he was telling of his sorrow at having been compelled to give up his studio on Tenth Street, declaring that overhead light was essential to his art; after which he discoursed for some time on the stony path of the artist, especially the artist in marble and bronze.

“So costly the material!” he complained, while Mr. Chidden nodded in the effort to appear sympathetic. “Look at this! Just the marble, eet costa five dollar!”

He indicated a figure group, a boy sitting on a man's knee, half finished. Mr. Chidden displayed a diplomatic interest, eying the group with the air of a man who understands more than he is willing to admit. He had to pay for the pretense. From that figure they passed to another, and another. The room was full of them—just begun, half finished, and completed. The Italian dragged them from all sorts of places—a leaping frog in bronze from under a heap of sketches, a boy with a flute from a soiled laundry bag; a girl poring over a book from a drawer of the wardrobe.

“I show you something,” he said suddenly, going to a corner where stood a table with something on it covered with a dark cloth. “Eet has been at Demarest in exhibit. Only yesterday eet came back. I did eet long ago—so beautiful—see!”

He carefully removed the dark cloth, displaying the figure of a woman in white marble. There was no drapery. Her arms were crossed on her breast, and one knee was bent a little inward; her head was half turned, as if in shamed modesty. It was beautiful.

“By Polly!” exclaimed Mr. Chidden, after a minute's critical survey; and then he added thoughtfully: “Bare as a picked chicken.”

It was the sight of that nude figure that gave Mr. Chidden his idea. But it came later—three or four days later—for in the presence of the figure he was really somewhat abashed. And the seed of Mr. Chidden's strategy was the muttering to himself as he went downstairs after leaving Mr. Comicci:

“I'd like to see Maria's face when she looked at that!”

The immediate effect of his visit was to soften his suspicion of Mr. Comicci. He seemed so harmless and amiable, and, poor devil that he was, what did it matter if he beat Maria out of some rent? Mr. Chidden was only too glad to see his sister done for once. He began to doubt if the kiss had really been delivered; and, looking at Maria's face, he strongly doubted if any man, in any extremity, would have the temerity to kiss her.

It was about a week later that his doubts vanished decidedly and suddenly. Coming through the hall one afternoon, he heard an indistinct murmur of voices behind the closed door of the parlor. As his footsteps approached, the voices became silent; but as he reached the top of the stairs on the floor above, they came again to his ears, very faintly. Instantly he was suspicious. He halted, and stood still to think, with a hesitation born not of any scruples of morality, but to bolster up his courage. Then he returned to the stairs and descended slowly, noiselessly. From the hall the voices were audible, but he could not catch the words. He tiptoed cautiously to the door of the library in the rear and across to the curtains that hung between that room and the parlor, and, with a beating heart and set lips, he peeped through their folds.

What he saw was his sister Maria seated on the green plush sofa, her face redder than ever, and an absurd tenderness in her eyes, gazing fondly at Mr. Comicci, who was kneeling on the carpet at her feet and holding fast to both her hands!

The Italian's voice came, plainly audible.

“You will! You will!” he murmured passionately.

He began to plant furious kisses all over her hands. She shook her head.

“I'm too old. You can't love me,” the astonished Mr. Chidden heard her say.

“Ah!” groaned the lover. “Ah, what is age when one is beautiful? So beautiful! Eet is to break my heart!”

Still she shook her head, but with less determination. It was easy to see that she was yielding. The ardent wooer took one knee from the floor, passed an arm around her waist, and resumed the hand-kissing.

“So beautiful and pure!” he cried in an exalted whisper. It was wonderful. No one but a Latin could possibly have done it. “I implore you—ah—make me happy! Be my wife!”

And then came the voice of Minnie, the kitchen girl, from below:

“Mr. Chidden! Mr. Chid-den!”

Mr. Chidden, with an inward curse, turned so quickly that he nearly betrayed himself by knocking over a lamp pedestal. The voice of Minnie continued, rising higher. He tiptoed silently into the hall and down the stairs, meeting Minnie at the foot.

“What the heck do you want?” he demanded savagely.

“The man's here for the bottles,” she replied in a tone of surprise at his manner of unaccustomed violence.

After all, as he told himself when he had retired to the cellar that evening to think, the interruption was of little consequence. He had seen and heard enough. Whether Maria had said yes or no, it was certain that she would eventually say yes.

“Indecent amorosity!” said Mr. Chidden aloud.

He sat down and began to think.

And fate played into his hands. The scheme was his own, but opportunity came from Maria herself. It was the next morning when she called him upstairs to order him to beat the parlor rugs and lay a fire in the grate. This in preparation for a meeting of the Help a Little Club, to be held on Thursday.

It was not the first time Mr. Chidden had been called on to prepare for the Help a Little Club, an organization of ladies of Maria's church, who met weekly to sew for charity and to gossip. Always, hitherto, as he had carried the rugs into the back yard, he had cursed the club for that addition to his labors; and so he did on this occasion. But suddenly, as he was arranging the paper and kindling in the grate, he recognized opportunity. He stopped, stood up, and frowned.

“Great legs!” he cried; and repeated: “Great legs!”

And as he finished laying the fire, a continual grin of humorous and vengeful expectancy covered his face.

That afternoon he made his simple preparations. They consisted of a trip to the paint shop on Eighth Avenue, where he procured a ten-cent can of black paint and a small brush. He carried them to the cellar and concealed them in an old barrel.

Thursday morning came, and with it a display of unexampled energy on the part of Mr. Chidden. The furnace ashes were attended to before breakfast, and by nine o'clock he had completed all the tasks that usually took him till noon. This was a mistake, but it was perceived by no one.

At twenty minutes past nine, Mr Comicci came down the stairs and went into the street for his morning walk. Mr. Chidden witnessed his departure from the dining-room window. He waited five minutes, then went to the cellar for his paint and brush. As he came back up, he threw a hasty glance into the kitchen, where his sister Maria and Minnie were busied in the preparation of dainties for the expected guests. Then he passed swiftly upstairs to the third floor and entered Mr. Comicci's room,

Straight to the table in the corner he went, and drew off the dark cloth. He had no time to be embarrassed by the nudity of the marble lady; he had work to do. He took his brush and paint and went at it. In ten minutes he had finished. He replaced the cloth, hid the brush and paint under his coat, and returned to the cellar, where he buried the implements under a pile of wood.

“There!” he breathed, his heart still thumping from a sensation of perilous adventure. “If only the dago don't lift that cloth! Well, it's a chance!”

There was nothing to do now but wait for afternoon and the arrival of the Help a Little Club. But the wait was not so tedious as it might have been, after Mr. Comicci had returned from his walk, for he spent most of the time loitering about the lower hall, expecting momentarily to hear a door thrown violently open upstairs and the voice of the Italian raised in wrath. But neither of these sounds came, though the guests did.

At the appearance of the first of them, a little after two o'clock, Mr. Chidden retreated to the floor above, having been instructed by Maria to keep out of the way. By three the parlor was full, and Mr. Chidden could hear the confused hum of their voices through the closed door. He could imagine them—old ladies, middle-aged ladies, fat ladies, lean ladies, amiable ladies, sour ladies, sitting in two or three circles, with both their tongues and needles running at the rate of two hundred strokes a second.

He had decided to wait till four o'clock before beginning operations, but half an hour before that time arrived, he was frightfully impatient; and he kept listening fearfully for indications of the discovery of his plot upstairs. At length he could bear it no longer. He made his way, with a strange reluctance, to the door of the third-floor front. There he hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked sharply. The Italian's voice came:

“Come in!”

As he opened the door, Mr. Chidden couldn't help sending a quick glance toward the rear corner, and he gave a little sigh of relief as he saw that the table and its cloth-covered statue were in their normal position. He turned to Mr. Comicci, who stood in an attitude of polite inquiry.

“My sister Maria sent me up,” said he. “She's got some lady friends visiting, and she wants to know if she can bring them up to look at your things.”

Of course, Mr. Comicci made no difficulty about it. He said it would make him very happy to show the ladies his poor things, only the room was very untidy—— But that was to be expected of an artist.

“Sure,” Mr. Chidden agreed. “They'll be right up.”

He turned and went back downstairs. At the parlor door, he did not hesitate. Time was precious now. The Italian might begin to uncover things. His knock brought Maria herself to the door.

“What do you want?” she demanded impatiently, when she saw her brother.

“Mr. Comicci sent me,” he replied, “to ask if you would like to bring the ladies up to look at his things. I think he expects he might sell something. Trashy stone!”

“Why, certainly,” she replied, after a second's thought. “Of course! It's very kind of him. Tell him we'll be up—let's see—in half an hour.”

Mr. Chidden was ready for this.

“He said,” he continued calmly, “that he has to go out right away, and would be obliged if you'd come at once.”

“Well—I don't know——” Miss Maria hesitated; then added: “All right. Tell him we'll be up right away.”

Mr. Chidden remounted the stairs. His heart was thumping violently.

“Subtle mashination,” he breathed to himself. “Machiavelli. Italian work. I'll show the dago!”

He found Mr. Comicci trying to straighten up the room, throwing pieces of clothing into the wardrobe, picking bits of paper and clay from the floor, hiding the disreputable grate with a still more disreputable square of drapery. Mr. Chidden pitched in to help him. He brought a broom from the closet in the hall and swept the floor, while the Italian wiped off the chairs with a rag. Then together they arranged the objects for display on two boxes placed together in the middle of the room. There were dozens of them—clay models, plaster casts, white and mongrel marble, in all stages approaching completion. They had not quite finished emptying the bottom drawer of the wardrobe when they heard steps and voices on the stairs.

“They're coming!” whispered Mr. Chidden, throwing the broom under the bed and retreating precipitately to a corner—the one farthest away from the table with the cloth-covered statue. The Italian threw on his coat, opened the door, and stood bowing on the threshold as the ladies approached, led by Miss Maria. He met her eyes with a tender glance.

“This is so kind of you, Mr. Comicci!” said she meltingly.

They entered. What a crew! Confusion! There was Mrs. Rankin, gray, but aggressive, with quick, dark eyes that darted continually; Mrs. Manger, with humble air and sharp tongue; the three Misses Bipp, echoes of the past and of one another; Mrs. Paulton, who had once lived on Riverside Drive; Mrs. Judson, grandmotherly sweet; and a dozen others. Mr. Chidden watched them from his corner as they trooped in, jostling one another at the door, and standing foolishly still when they got in, just as they do in a street car. He wanted to cry: “Move forward; plenty of room in front!” but he was occupied principally with speculations of his own.

They grouped themselves around the two boxes, after a general introduction to Mr. Comicci, with little ejaculations of pleasure and foolish remarks. Mrs. Rankin asked if they might handle, and picked up a piece before Mr. Comicci had time to reply. The others followed suit. They carried the things nearer the windows, for a better light, and pointed out to one another the more subtle excellences. But Mr. Chidden chuckled to himself as he observed that certain figures—those without drapery—remained untouched and uncriticized.

“Now, this tiger!” said Mrs. Paulton. “Such beautiful lines!”

“It is very fine,” agreed some one, “but the tail appears to be elongated.”

They gathered around the tiger.

“It is a long tail,” said Mrs. Rankin.

“Tigers have long tails,” retorted Miss Maria in the tone of a champion.

“Still, this tail is so very long!”

“Quite too long, I should say.”

“It is a long tail.”

“For a tail, it does seem too long.”

“A little too long,” said Mrs. Paulton, with finality, and they passed to something else.

As time passed, and the fire of appreciation and criticism began to die down, Mr. Chidden began to get worried. Was it possible that Mr. Comicci did not intend to show his masterpiece? It began to look that way. Mr. Chidden made a resolution; he would wait five minutes, then go and speak to one of the ladies about it. He began to count the seconds.

He was saved by a little woman in light blue, one of the younger ones, who had begun wandering about in search of things. Her voice suddenly sounded above the hubbub:

“Mr. Comicci! What is this? May I see?”

Mr. Chidden began to tremble as he saw that her hand was on the dark cloth. Would it work?

The Italian, who was gesticulating excitedly in an effort to explain the secrets of his art to Miss Maria and Mrs. Judson, glanced across, with a look of uneasiness.

“Why—I don't know ” he said. “You see—you might not like——”

“Why not?” demanded Mrs. Rankin.

“I don't know——” he stammered. “But yes—why not? Of course. You may look. No! Wait! Let me remove eet, signora. Eet verra easy fall.”

The ladies gathered around the table in a close group as the sculptor approached and laid his hands on the cloth. They would seem to have foreseen in some mysterious way what was to follow. From his corner, Mr. Chidden watched them, and noted, with satisfaction, that Maria, with Mrs. Rankin and the Misses Bipp, were together in the front rank, up against the table.

“Eet is the true beauty,” the Italian was saying. “The line—the form—so pure and beautiful—nothing so beautiful——”

He removed the cloth.

After all, perhaps the good ladies saw only what they expected to see, as far as the sculpture was concerned. But the effect of nudity that came from that statue suddenly uncovered in their midst was startling. It was a rather large figure, and so completely naked! So profoundly naked! And it was well done! The marble whiteness of body and limbs had a wonderful fleshlike appearance, so subtle were the lines, the little elevations and depressions, so skillfully and lovingly chiseled. They stood and looked at that statue of an exposed female form; and they saw on the rough marble at its foot, painted with black paint in small but precise capital letters:

 

MISS MARIA CHIDDEN.

 

A gasp of amazement and horror came from eighteen throats. They looked at Maria Chidden and back again at the statue, and they were dangerously near explosion from the supreme awfulness of the thing. It was an excellent instance of the lack of reason in the feminine mind. To any reasonable eye, even one totally unskilled in the perception of form, it must have been patently manifest that the proportions of the lady in marble were certainly not the proportions of Miss Maria Chidden; the thing could have been considered a representation of that attenuated dame only by an heroic application of the theory of idealization. But they did not think of that; they saw this reproduction of a female person without any clothes on, and they saw the label. Their faces turned all colors from ghostly pale to purple, and they stood speechless.

The horrified silence was broken by Miss Maria herself.

“Wretch!” she screamed, and made a dive for Mr. Comicci.

The Italian, springing aside, barely missed her clutching fingers, and caused two of the Misses Bipp to sit down abruptly on the floor. He escaped by leaping over their prostrate forms. Then confusion and babel. As the Misses Bipp went down, the others screamed, and the more timid made for the door. The third Miss Bipp sank into a chair and began to moan. Miss Maria continued to clutch frantically, and shout “Wretch!” at the top of her voice, but the Italian kept out of reach behind the others, shouting back meanwhile:

“No, no, no, I did not do eet! No, no, no, signora!”

Mrs. Rankin and Mrs. Manger assisted the fallen Bipps to arise, and led them to the door; the others had by this time crowded into the hall. They hustled them out.

Miss Maria stood in the middle of the floor, trembling and choking with rage.

“No, no, no!” shouted the Italian, dancing up and down in front of her. “I did not do eet! See! Eet could not be—eet is small, plump; and you, you are—what you say?—you are skinny, beeg——”

“Wretch!” screamed Maria.

The Italian jumped back. Then he stopped suddenly and let out a fearful Italian oath. He glanced toward the corner where Mr. Chidden had last been seen. It was empty. The whole room was empty. Of Mr. Chidden there was neither sight nor sound, and from the hall came the chorus of the ladies' voices as they trooped downstairs.

“That—I did not do eet!” cried Mr. Comicci, trying to seize Maria's hand. “No, no, no! So pure and beautiful!”

She threw at him an awful look of concentrated scorn. She flew to the door.

“Miserable dago!” she said in a choking voice. The door slammed after her.

 

It was, on the whole, I think, a stroke of genius, for it must be remembered that Mr. Chidden appreciated the necessity for witnesses; also, that he secured the very best possible. It is true that it gave him a lot of extra work; he spent most of Saturday cleaning up the room, from which Mr. Comicci was ejected Friday morning. But his heart was light and his soul buoyant, and he sang as he worked. And it may as well be recorded that when he went to the movies on Eighth Avenue on Saturday evening, he wore a new pair of pants.