A Top-Floor Idyl. Van Schaick George

vagaries of human nature. Suddenly, a splendid story suggested itself to me about a dog and tramp. It would be good for about four thousand words, and I hurried away to Mrs. Milliken's lest the inspiration might vanish on the way. I would have a dog all but human, a tramp all but dog, and the animal would sacrifice itself for a master redeemed at last by the spectacle of canine virtue. I knew just what magazine might accept it. A few minutes later I reached the house, which, like the Milliken woman, has seen better days. The frittering brownstone and discolored brick suit me as naturally as a hole in the sand befits a prairie dog. I let myself in, softly, with due regard to the slumbers of people compelled by the tragedy of life to go to bed at the behest of a clock, and trod the creaking stairs in utter darkness, guided by a friendly but shaky balustrade. Then I reached my landing, opened my door, turned on the light, put on my slippers and fired my coat on the bed. As soon as I had dropped my collar and tie on the floor, I was ready for work and sat down to my machine. Thank goodness, the inspiration had remained; clearly and cogently the sentences flowed; after I had finished the first page, I was already weeping in spirit for my noble dog. Then, suddenly, came a rap at my door, hurried, eager, impatient.

      "Great Heavens!" I thought at once. "I am to be interrupted because that blessed woman objects to loud typewriting at one a.m. I'm glad she's going away to the hospital."

      I went to the door, assuming my most austere mien, and opened it.

      CHAPTER II

      FRIEDA THE ANGEL

      "Please help me!" cried the woman hoarsely. "My God! What shall I do?"

      It was, as I had surmised, the Murillo-faced occupant of the room on the other side of the landing. In my dismay the desperate thought came to me that a lonely bachelor was the last individual she should have sought aid from. But her look of haggardness, the teeth pressed into her lips, the clenched hands, the chin carried forward in an expression of agonized supplication rebuked my egotism.

      "I – I don't know," I confessed humbly.

      She turned half way around, seized the balustrade and stared at me vacantly.

      "Allow me to help you back to your room," I suggested shakily. "Then I'll run downstairs and get Mrs. Milliken."

      She went with me, haltingly, and threw herself upon the decrepit horsehair sofa, as I abandoned her and ran downstairs, nearly breaking my neck on account of my slovenly old slippers. At the landlady's door I pounded till I chanced to remember she had informed me that she expected to spend the night at her married daughter's, in Fort Lee. In despond I bethought myself of the young women who sold candy. No! Such problems were not of their solving. Of course there was the negro cook, hidden in some ancillary cavern of the basement, but cowardice prevented me from penetrating such darkness, and I ran out of the house, coatless. Half way down the block were two doctors' signs. One shining in the freshness of new nickelling; the other an old thing of battered tin, with faded gold letters.

      "This," I decided, "is a case requiring the mature experience of age," and I rang furiously, awaiting the appearance of the venerable owner of the ancient sign. A shock-headed and red-haired youth opened the door, clad in pajamas and rubbing his eyes.

      "Yes," he said pleasantly.

      "I need the doctor's services at once," I informed him. "Hustle him up immediately, my good fellow. Please be quick, it may be a matter of life and death."

      "Oh! I'm the doctor," he said, "and I'll be with you in a few seconds. Sit right down."

      He left me in the darkness of the hallway and I sank down on a wooden seat, upon a palm leaf fan that crackled dismally beneath my slender weight. Faintly, in the back, I discerned a ghostly folding bed and heard the swishing of garments flying across the room. In spite of my feverish impatience the doctor came out again as fast as if he had been clothed by some magic art.

      "What kind of a case?" he asked.

      "I believe you are wanted to help increase and multiply," I answered.

      "Should have told me at once. Got the wrong bag!" he reproved me, disappearing. At once he returned. I went out first, and he followed me, slamming the door with a sound that reverberated through the quiet street, and we sprinted off. I used the key with a shaking hand.

      "Top floor," I informed him.

      "All my patients seem to live on top floors," he replied.

      At the woman's door I knocked.

      "I – I have brought you assistance," I told her. "This – this young gentleman knows all about such things; he's a doctor. I – I'll be in the next room, if there's anything else I can do for you."

      "Is there no woman in the place?" inquired the young man.

      "No. Only some girls who know nothing save the price of caramels and the intricacies of tango. But I can find one inside of twenty minutes; I'll go and get her."

      "That's good," he assented cheerfully, going to his patient, who looked at him in some fear.

      But I reflected that the doctor seemed kindly, and by no means overwhelmed by the responsibility thrust upon him, so that I took the time to slip on my boots, after which I ran to Eleventh Street, where Frieda Long burrows in a small flat. Her studio, shared with another woman, is farther uptown. Finally she opened the door, clad in a hoary dressing-gown and blinking, for she had not been able to find her spectacles.

      "Who is it?" she demanded placidly, as if being awakened at two fifteen in the morning had been a common incident of her life.

      "It's Dave, just Dave Cole," I answered. "I want you, Frieda – that is to say, a woman wants you badly, at my house – taking her share of the primal curse. Don't know who she is, but Mrs. Milliken's away. She's alone with a little half-hatched doctor, and – and – "

      "Come in. Sit there in the front room. Cigarettes on that table. I'll close the door and be with you in five minutes," she assured me tranquilly.

      I tried to smoke, but the thing tasted like Dead Sea fruit and I pitched it out of the open window. An amazingly short time afterwards Frieda was ready, bespectacled and wearing an awful hat. I think she generally picks them out of rag bags.

      As we walked along, she entertained me with her latest idea for a picture. It would be a belted Orion pursuing the daughters of Pleione, who would be changing into stars. She explained some of the difficulties and beauties of the subject, and her conception of it, while I looked at her in wonder. I must say that, from her stubby, capable fingers, there flow pure poetry of thought and exquisiteness of coloring. Her form, reminding one of a pillow tied none too tightly in the middle, her tousled head containing a brain masculine in power and feminine in tenderness, her deep contralto, might be appanages of some back-to-the-earth female with an uncomfortable mission. But she's simply the best woman in the world.

      She panted to the top floor and, at my desire, followed me into my room, where I had left the door open and the gas burning. She gave a swift glance around the place, and her eyes manifested disapproval.

      "I wonder how you can ever find anything on that desk," she reproved me, as I searched in a bureau drawer. To my utter terror she began to put some papers in order.

      "Here's an unopened letter from Paisley's Magazine," she announced.

      I pounced upon it and tore it open, to discover a check for eighty dollars.

      "Good!" I exclaimed. "I'd forgotten that story. It was called 'Cynthia's Mule'; I wonder what possessed me to write about a mule? Don't know anything about them."

      "That's why it sold, most likely," said Frieda. "The public prefers poetry to truth in its prose. What are you wasting time for, fooling in that drawer?"

      "I have it. It's a twenty-dollar bill," I told her. "I put it among my socks so that I shouldn't spend it. Might be very handy, you know. She might need something, and you could go out and buy it."

      "Can you afford it, Dave?" she asked me.

      "Of course, and you forget the check I've just received. Mrs. Milliken will cash it for me at her butcher's. He's very obliging."

      Just then we heard something. Frieda stuffed the bill in some part