The policeman was not Irish or German-American.He was therefore neither loud nor browbeating.He was dry, quiet and accurate, and it seemed to Martin that either he didn't enjoy being dressed in a little brief authority or was a misanthrope, eager to return to his noiseless and solitary tramp under the April stars.Martin gave him Oldershaw's full name and address and his own; and the girl, still shrill and shattered, gave hers, after protesting that all automobiles ought to be put in a gigantic pile and scrapped, that all harum-scarum young men should be clapped in bed at ten o'clock and that all policemen should be locked up in their stations to play dominoes."If it'll do you any good to know it," she said finally, "it's Susie Capper, commonly called 'Tootles.' And I tell you what it is.If you come snooping round my place to get me before the beak, I'll scream and kick, so help me Bob, I will." There was an English cockney twang in her voice.
The policeman left her in the middle of a paean, with the wounded taxi and Martin, and the light of a lamp-post throwing up the unnatural red of her lips on a pretty little white face.He had probably gone to call up the taxicab company.
Then she turned to Martin."The decent thing for you to do, Mr.Nut, is to see me home," she said."I'm blowed if I'm going to face any more attempts at murder alone.My word, what a life!""Come along, then," said Martin, and he put his hand under her elbow.That amazing avenue, which had the appearance of a great, deep cut down the middle of an uneven mountain, was almost deserted.
From the long line of street lamps intermittent patches of light were reflected as though in glass.The night and the absence of thickly crawling motors and swarming crowds gave it dignity.Astrange, incongruous Oriental note was struck by the deep red of velvet hangings thrown up by the lights in a furniture dealer's shop on the second floor of a white building.
"Look for a row of women's ugly wooden heads painted by some one suffering from delirium tremens," said Miss Susie Capper as they turned down West Forty-sixth Street."It's a dressmaker's, although you might think it was an asylum for dope fiends.I've got a bedroom, sitter and bath on the top floor.The house is a rabbit warren of bedrooms, sitters and baths, and in every one of them there's some poor devil trying to squeeze a little kindness out of fate.That wretched taxi driver! He may have a wife waiting for him.
Do you think that red-haired feller's got to the hospital yet? He had a nice cut on his own silly face--and serve him right! I hope it'll teach him that he hasn't bought the blooming world--but of course it won't.He's the sort that never gets taught anything, worse luck! Nobody spanked him when he was young and soft.Come on up, and you shall taste my scrambled eggs.I'll show you what a forgiving little soul I am."She laughed, ran her eyes quickly over Martin, and opened the door with a latchkey.Half a dozen small letter boxes were fastened to the wall, with cards in their slots.
"Who the devil cares?" said Martin to himself, and he followed the girl up the narrow, ill-lighted staircase covered with shabby carpet.Two or three inches of white stockings gleamed above the drab uppers of her high-heeled boots.Outside the open door of a room on the first floor there was a line of milk bottles, and Martin sighted a man in shirt sleeves, cooking sausages on a small gas jet in a cubby-hole.He looked up, and a cheery smile broke out on his clean-shaven face.There was brown grease paint on his collar.
"Hello, Tootles," he called out.
"Hello, Laddy," she said."How'd it go to-night?""Fine.Best second night in the history of the theater.Come in and have a bite.""Can't.Got company."
And up they went, the aroma following.
A young woman in a sky-blue peignoir scuttled across the next landing, carrying a bottle of beer in each hand.There was a smell of onions and hot cheese."What ho, Tootles," she said.
"What ho, Irene.Is it true they've put your notice up?""Yep, the dirty dogs! Twelve weeks' rehearsals and eight nights'
playing! Me for the novelties at Gimbel's, if this goes on."A phonograph in another room ground out an air from "Boheme."They mounted again."Here's me," said Miss Capper, waving her hand to a man in a dirty dressing gown who was standing on the threshold of the front apartment, probably to achieve air.The room behind him was foggy with tobacco smoke which rose from four men playing cards.
He himself was conspicuously drunk and would have spoken if he had been able.As it was, he nodded owlishly and waggled his fingers.
The girl threw open her door and turned up the light."England, Home and Beauty," she said."Excuse me while I dress the ship."Seizing a pair of corsets that sprawled loosely on the center table, she rammed them under a not very pristine cushion on the sofa.
Martin burst out laughing.The Crystal Room wine was still in his head."Very nippy!" he said.
"Have to be nippy in this life, believe me.Give me a minute to powder my nose and murmur a prayer of thanksgivin', and then I'll set the festive board and show you how we used to scramble eggs in Shaftesbury Avenue.""Right," said Martin, getting out of his overcoat.How about it? Was this one way of making the little old earth spin?
Susie Capper went into a bedroom even smaller than the sitting room, turned up the light over her dressing table and took off her little white hat.From where Martin stood, he could see in the looking-glass the girl's golden bobbed hair, pretty oval face with too red lips and round white neck.There, it was obvious, stood a little person feminine from the curls around her ears to the hole in one of her stockings, and as highly and gladly sexed as a purring cat.
"Buck up, Tootles," cried Martin."Where do you keep the frying pan?"She turned and gave him another searching look, this time of marked approval."My word, what a kid you look in the light!" she said."No one would take you for a blooming road-hog.Well, who knows? You and I may have been brought together like this to work out one of Fate's little games.This may be the beginning of a side-street romance, eh?"And she chuckled at the word and turned her nose into a small snow-capped hill.
