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diff --git a/old/69030-0.txt b/old/69030-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6b77bf6..0000000 --- a/old/69030-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1133 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The girl in the crowd, by Albert -Payson Terhune - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The girl in the crowd - -Author: Albert Payson Terhune - -Release Date: October 9, 2022 [eBook #69030] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Roger Frank - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN THE CROWD *** - - - - - - The Girl in the Crowd - - by Albert Payson Terhune - - -Stretch an invisible cord knee-high across the sidewalk at Broadway -and Forty-second Street, and in five minutes a hundred prettier -girls than Daisy Reynolds will stumble over it. (A hundred homelier -girls too, for that matter!) - -Daisy was just the Girl in the Crowd. Look down the aisle of your -subway- or surface- or L-car on the way home to-night, and you will -see her. You will see her by the dozen. - -But you will not observe her, unless you look hard. She is not the -type of girl to make you murmur fatuously: “Gee, but I wish she was -_my_ stenographer!” Nor is she the sort that excites pity for her -plainness. She is--yes, my term “the Girl in the Crowd” best fits -her. - -For three years, after she left high school, Daisy occupied -twenty-eight inches of space along one of the two sides of a room -whose walls were wainscoted in honeycombed metal. At shelves in -front of the honeycombing sat double lines of girls with ugly steel -appliances over their frizzed or lanky hair. Their hands were ever -flitting from spot to spot in the perforated wainscoting, deftly -shifting plugs from hole to hole. - -An excrescence, like a misshapen black-rubber lily, jutted forth -from the wall facing each girl. Into these lily-mouths the damsels -were wont to croon such airy sentiments as these: - -“Schuyler 9051 don’t answer. --Yes, I’m ringing Aud’bon -2973. --Beekman 4000 is busy. --I’ll give you Inf’ma-tion. --’Xcuse -it, please. --No’m, _I_ didn’t cut you off. What number was you -talking to? --Schuyler 4789 is still busy. --It’s just -twelve-forty-two, by the c’rect time. --Number, please.” - -Up and down the double rank marched a horribly efficient woman who -discouraged repartee and inter-desk conversation. The long room -buzzed with the rhythmic droning of fifty voices and with the -purring of countless plugs clicked into innumerable sockets. - -To end, once and for all, the killing suspense, the room wherein -Daisy Reynolds toiled for the first three years of her business -career was a telephone exchange. - -And at the three years’ end, she was assigned to the job of -day-operator at the Clavichord Arms. - - -The pay at the hotel was no larger than at the exchange; but there -was always the possibility of tips, and the certainty of -Christmas-money. Besides, there were chances to rest or to read -between calls. On the whole, Daisy rejoiced at the change--as might -a private who is made corporal. - -The Clavichord Arms is a glorious monument to New York’s efforts at -boosting the high cost of living. The building occupies nearly a -third of a city block, in length and depth, and it towers to the -height of nine stories. Its facade and main entrance and -cathedral-like lobby are rare samples of an architecture whose -sacred motto is, “Put all your goods in the show-window.” - -When the high cost of living first menaced our suffering land, -scores of such apartment-houses sprang into life, in order that New -Yorkers might do their bit toward the upkeep of high prices. Here, -at a rental ranging from fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars a -year, one may live in quarters almost as commodious as those for -which a suburbanite or smaller city’s dweller pays fifty dollars a -month. - -And nobly did New York rally to the aid of the men who sought thus -to get its coin. So quickly did the new apartments fill with tenants -that more and yet more and more such buildings were run up. - -Men who grumbled right piteously at the advance of bread from five -to six cents a loaf eagerly paid three thousand dollars a year for -the privilege of living in the garish-fronted abodes, and they -sneered at humbler friends who, for the same sum, rented thirty-room -mansions in the suburbs. - -And this, by prosy degrees, brings us back to Daisy Reynolds. - - -The Clavichord Arms’ interior decorator had used up all his -ingenuity and his appropriation before he came to the cubby-hole -behind the gilded elevators--the cubby-hole that served as the -telephone-operator’s quarters. The cubby-hole was airless, -windowless, low and sloped of ceiling, calcimined of wall, and -equipped with no furniture at all except the switchboard-desk, a -single kitchen chair, one eight-candle-power electric light and an -iron clothes-hook. - -Here, for eight hours a day, sat Daisy Reynolds. Here, with stolid -conscientiousness, she manipulated the plugs, that the building’s -seventy tenants might waste their own and their friends’ time in -endless phone-chats. - -It was dull and uninspiring and lonely in the dark cubby-hole, after -the lights and the constant work and companionship of the Exchange. -There was much more leisure, too, than at the Exchange. - -Daisy at first tried to enliven this leisure by reading. She loved -to read; book or magazine--it was all the same to Daisy, so long as -the hero and heroine at last outwitted the villain and came together -at the altar. - -But there are drawbacks to reading all day--even to reading -union-made love stories, by eight-candle-power light and with -everlasting interruption from the switchboard. So Daisy, by way of -amusement, began to “listen in.” - -“Listening in” is a plug-shifting process whereby the -telephone-operator may hear any conversation over the wire. In some -States, I understand, it is a misdemeanor. But perhaps there is no -living operator who has not done it. In some private exchanges it is -so common a custom that the cry of “Fish!” warns every other -operator in the room that a particularly listenable talk is going -on. This same cry of “Fish” is an invitation for all present to -listen in. - -(Yes, your telephonic love-talk, your fierce love-spats and your -sacredest love-secrets have been avidly heard--and possibly -repeated--again and again, by Central. Remember that, next time. -When you hear a faint click on the wire during your -conversation,--and sometimes when you don’t,--an operator is pretty -certain to be listening in.) - -At first Daisy was amused by what she heard. The parsimonious -butcher-order of the house’s richest woman, the hiccoughed excuses -of a husband whom business detained downtown, the vapid chatter of -lad and lass, the scolding of slow dressmakers, the spicy anecdotes -told by half-hour phone-gabblers--all these were a pleasant -variation on the day’s routine. But at last, they began to pall. And -just as they waxed tiresome--romance began. - - -The voice in Apartment 60--a clear voice, girlish and -vibrant--called up 9999-Z Worth. And Worth 9999-Z replied in a tone -that fairly throbbed with eager longing. That was the beginning. -Shamelessly--soon rapturously--Daisy Reynolds listened in. - -The voice in Apartment 60 belonged to a girl named Madeline. And -Worth 9999-Z (whose first name, by the way, was Karl) spoke that -foreign-sounding name _Madeline_ as though it were a phrase of -hauntingly sweet church music. He and Madeline had known each other, -it appeared, for some months; but only recently had they made the -divine discovery of their mutual love. It was then that the phone -talks had begun--the talks that varied in number from three to seven -a day, and in length from three to thirty minutes. - -Always, now, promptly at nine o’clock in the morning, Karl called up -his sweetheart. And always, an hour or so later, she called him up -for a return-dialogue. Their talk was not mushy; it was beautiful. -It thrilled with a love as deathless as the stars, a love through -whose longing ran a current of unhappiness that Daisy could not -understand. - -Daisy grew to live for those talks. They became part of her very -life--the loveliest part. She was curt, almost snappish, when other -calls interfered with the bliss of listening-in. More than once she -shamelessly broke off the connection when Madeline chanced to be -talking to some old bore at a time when Karl sought to speak to her. - -Karl, it seemed, was a downtown business man. As scientists -reconstruct an entire fossil animal from a single bone of its left -hind leg, so Daisy Reynolds built up a vision of Karl from his deep -and powerful voice. He was tall, slender, graceful, yet broad of -shoulder and deep of chest. Brown curls crisped above his white -Greek forehead. His eyes were somber yet glowing. His age was from -twenty-eight to thirty. He dressed like a collar advertisement. - -Madeline was still easier to reconstruct, from her voice. She too -was tall. She was willowy and infinitely graceful--gold-brown of -hair, dark blue of eye, with soft-molded little features and long -jetty lashes. With such a voice, she could not have been otherwise. - -Daisy gathered from their earlier talks that Madeline’s family -disapproved the match. She even learned, from something Karl said, -that there was another suitor--one Phil--on whom the family smiled -and whom Madeline cordially detested. Once or twice, too, Phil -called up Apartment 60. He had a husky voice and spoke brief -commonplaces. Madeline answered him listlessly and still more -briefly. But he seldom phoned to her. And she never, by any chance, -phoned to him. - - -So the ardent, tenderly melancholy love-story wore on. The lovers -would make appointments for clandestine meetings--would speak in -joyous retrospect of luncheons or motor-drives of the preceding day. -Evidently, Madeline’s cruel family kept stern watch upon her -movements. Daisy used to smile in joyous approval at the girl’s -dainty cleverness in outmaneuvering them and meeting her sweetheart. - -Ever through the glory of their love ran that black thread of -melancholy. Apparently all the glad secret meetings and the adoring -phone-talks could not make up to them for the family’s opposition. -Daisy had to bite her lips, sometimes, to keep from breaking in on -the conversation and demanding: - -“Why don’t you two run off and get married? They’d have to come -around, then. And if they didn’t, why should you care?” - -To a girl cooped up alone all day in a stuffy cubby-hole, -imagination is ten times stronger than to the girl whose thoughts -can be distracted by outside things. To Daisy, immured in her -dim-lighted cupboard behind the elevators, this romance of Karl and -Madeline was fast becoming the very biggest thing in her drab life. - -These two lovers were as romantic, as poetical, as yearningly -adoring as _Romeo_ and _Juliet_. Karl was as desperately jealous as -_Othello_ or as the hero of one of Laura Jean Libbey’s greatest -books. Madeline was _the Captive Maid_ come to life again. Oh, it -was all very, very wonderful! - -Then came the day of jarring disillusionment, a day which Daisy -followed by sobbing until midnight on her none-too-soft -boarding-house bed, three blocks to westward. - - -Promptly at nine that morning, as usual, Karl called up Apartment -60. - -“Sweetheart,” he joyfully hailed Madeline, “I’ve just bought the new -car. It’s a beauty. And you’re going to be the very first person to -ride in it--to consecrate it.” - -“That’s darling of you!” replied Madeline in evident delight. “I’d -rather ride in a wheelbarrow with you than in a Rolls-Royce -with--with--” - -“With Phil?” asked Karl almost savagely. - -“With anybody,” she evaded. “Tell me more about the car. Is it--” - -“I’m not going to tell you,” he refused. “I’m going to show it to -you instead. Here’s my idea: I’ll knock off work at noon and bring -the car uptown. I’ll meet you at the subway kiosk at half-after -twelve; we can run up to the Arrowhead to lunch, and then on up to -the Tumble Inn for--” - -“But I can’t, dear--I _can’t_!” expostulated Madeline. “Don’t you -remember? I told you I have to lunch with Phil and those people from -Buffalo, at the Knickerbocker, at one o’clock. Oh, dear! I wish I -didn’t have to. But I--” - -“Phone him you’re sick,” urged Karl. “I’ve set my heart on -christening the new car this way.” - -“I could get away to-morrow--” she began. - -“But _I_ can’t,” he said. “I’ve a directors’ meeting at three. Oh, -come along to-day, Beautiful! Tell Phil you’re sick and--” - -“And have him come rushing up here, in a fidget, for fear I’m going -to die?” she suggested. “That is just what Phil would do. No, dear, -I--” - -“Then tell him you don’t _want_ to lunch with him,” urged Karl, -losing patience as a man will when some babyishly cherished -woman-plan of his is upset. “Tell him you have to go to your -sister’s or--” - -“I can’t, Karl!” she declared; and she added, beseechingly: “Don’t -be unreasonable, dear boy. Please don’t. And don’t be cross; it -makes me so unhappy when you are. You know how hard I try to do -everything you want me to--and how glad I am to. But I _can’t_ get -out of this luncheon. Phil especially wants me to be there. These -Buffalo people are old friends of his.” - -“Why should you have to go there, just because he wants you to?” -demanded Karl, far more crankily than ever Daisy had heard him -speak. “Why do you? You aren’t his slave.” - -“No,” returned Madeline, her own temper beginning to fray, “but I am -his _wife_. You seem to forget that.” - -“I don’t forget it half as often as _you_ do!” flashed Karl. - -At which brutally truthful reply, the receiver of Apartment 60’s -wire clanked down upon its hook. Nor could all of Karl’s repeated -efforts bring Madeline back to the telephone. - - -Daisy Reynolds slumped forward upon the switchboard desk, her face -in her hands, her slim body a-shake. She felt as though her every -nerve had been wrenched. She was sick all over. This, then, was the -wondrous romance in which she had reveled. This was the melancholy, -beauteous love-story which had become part of her own colorless -life! A vulgar intrigue between a married woman (not a wife, but a -married woman--Daisy now realized the difference between the two) -and a man not her husband! - -The iridescent bubbles of romance burst into thinnest air. Daisy was -numb with the horror and disgust of it all. Even of old she had -fastidiously refused to listen in when another girl’s merry cry of -“Fish!” had told that some such illicit dialogue was on the wire. -And now, for weeks, she had been raptly listening to just such -talks. - -She loathed herself for the silly bubbles she had blown. Their -lovely sheen was miasmic slime. They were filled with foul gases. A -great shame possessed Daisy Reynolds. - -Next morning Daisy came to work swollen-eyed from futile crying over -the death of her dreams, and dull-headed from too little sleep. Half -an hour later, promptly at nine, Karl called up Apartment 60. - -Daisy’s hand trembled as she made the connection. She hated herself -for listening in. Yet from morbid fascination she did it. - -“Darling!” was Karl’s remorsefully passionate greeting as Madeline -answered the phone-bell’s summons. “I’m so sorry! So horribly sorry! -I spoke rottenly to you yesterday. Wont you forgive me? _Please_ -do!” - -“Please don’t let us speak about it,” began Madeline stiffly. - -Then her shell of offendedness collapsed, and she went on with a -break in her sweet voice. - -“Oh, I’m so glad you called up! I was so afraid you wouldn’t. And I -was going to try so hard not to phone to you. But I knew I’d do -it--I _knew_ I would--if you didn’t call me first. I’ve been -terribly unhappy, dear.” - -“You’ve had nothing on me, in that,” he made answer. “I haven’t -slept all night, thinking how I spoke to you. It was our first -quarrel. And it was all my fault.” - -“It wasn’t,” she contradicted chokily. “It was all mine. I shouldn’t -have been hurt by what you said about my forgetting so often that--” - -“Don’t, dear,” he begged. “Don’t! It was a rotten thing for me to -say.” - -“It was--it was true,” she replied, her voice quavering as she -fought back the tears. “But you told me yourself that you don’t -blame me. You know what my life with him has been, from the very -beginning. And till I met you I used to wish I were dead. Oh, you -_can’t_ blame me for forgetting him, for--for _you_!” - -“You’re an angel!” he declared. “I’m not fit to touch your hand. But -my love for you is the only thing there is in my life. And it’s -brought me the only happiness I ever knew. I used to think I’d like -to kill myself if it weren’t for my mother. And now you’ve given me -something--everything--to live for. I love you so, Madeline! Are you -sure you’ve forgiven me?” - -“_Forgiven_ you?” she echoed. “Why, Karl, I _love_ you.” - -Yes, the reply was banal enough. But the tone was not, nor was the -wordless exclamation of worship with which Karl received it. And to -her own self-disgust Daisy felt a stir of answering emotion in her -own breast. - -Just then she was required to connect Apartment 42 with the market, -and at once afterward to put through a long-distance call for the -building’s superintendent. And when next she sought to listen in, -Karl and Madeline were finishing their talk. All Daisy could catch -was Madeline’s childish query: - -“Can’t we please try out the new car to-morrow, if the directors’ -meeting is going to keep you this afternoon?” - -And he answered gayly: - -“To blue blazes with the directors! We’re going to Tumble Inn -to-day, you and I, sweetheart--even if New York doesn’t get a stroke -of business done south of Canal Street all afternoon. Good-by. -You’ll be sure to call me up later, wont you?” - - -Daisy sat back in her wabbly chair to take mental account of stock. - -She was amazed at herself--amazed, and a bit displeased, though not -as much so as she could have wished. All her ideas and ideals seemed -to be as wabbly as the kitchen chair she sat in. Womanlike, she -straightway began to justify herself. True, an hour earlier, she had -been filled with contempt for these two. Equally true, she was now -irresistibly drawn to them again--which most certainly called for a -reason; so she supplied the reason: - -Madeline had been forced into a marriage, in mere childhood, with a -man she did not love. And had she not said, “You know what my life -with him has been, from the very beginning?” That alone told the -story--the heartbreaking story of neglected wifehood, of -ill-treatment, of a starved soul. - -Who was Daisy to blame this pathetic young wife if she had at last -let love into her heart after years of bondage to a brute? Daisy -recalled Phil’s husky voice. From it she built up a physique that -was a blend of _Simon Legree’s_ and _Falstaff’s_, with a tinge of -_Bill Sikes_. And, her moral sense deserting her, she realized that -right or wrong she was steadfastly on the side of the lovers. - -During the days that followed, she listened in again, with all her -old-time hero-and-heroine-worship. Now she understood the strain of -melancholy in these two people’s love. It was the hopelessness of -that love which made them so sad, in the midst of their stolen -happiness. - -Once, in a free moment, Daisy slipped from her cubby-hole and into -the superintendent’s office, to ask for a stronger light-bulb. There -on the wall hung a typed list of the house’s tenants. Stealing a -glance at it while the superintendent’s back was turned, Daisy ran -her eye down the list until she came to the number she wanted: - -Apartment 60--Mr. and Mrs. Philip Caleb Vanbrugh. - -_Caleb!_ Yes, that was the sort of middle name her ugly-tempered -clod of a husband would have been likely to own. The names -_Madeline_ and _Caleb_ could no more blend than could violets and -prunes. Doubly, now, Daisy’s heart was with the lovers. - -One qualm, only, marred her sympathy. From the fact that Karl always -spoke of Vanbrugh by his first name, the men apparently were -friends. And to woo one’s friend’s wife is black vileness. Even -Daisy knew that. So she readjusted matters in her elastic mind, and -decided the men were merely close business acquaintances, and that -friendship did not enter into their relations. Daisy felt better -about it, after that--much better. - - -One morning when Daisy connected the wire for the lovers and -prepared for her daily feast of listening in, a sharp whir from -another apartment in the house drew her back to earth. In her -nervous haste to make the new connection and get back to her -listening, she awkwardly knocked out a plug or two. Absent-mindedly -she readjusted them, trying meantime to catch what the second caller -was trying to say to her. - -This caller was a fussy woman in Apartment 12, who first wanted to -know the correct time and then asked for a wire to Philadelphia. A -full minute elapsed before Daisy could get back to the lovers. And -as she turned again to their talk, she realized with a guilty start -that in the mix-up of the various plugs she had left the switch -open. - -Have you ever called up a telephone number and been let in on a -conversation already going on between the person you called up and -somebody else? It gives one an absurdly guilty feeling. And it means -the switch has carelessly been left open, so that anybody calling up -can tap the wire. That is the condition in which Daisy had chanced -to leave the switch to Apartment 60. Eagerly she stretched forth her -hand to repair the error. As she did so, three sentences struck her -ear. They were spoken in quick succession by three people--as -follows: - -“Good-by, darling,” said Karl. “I’ll be there at one.” - -“Good-by, boy dear,” answered Madeline. “I’ll call you up again -before then.” - -“Who in hell are _you_?” bellowed a third and huskier voice. “And -what do you mean by calling my wife darling?” - -_Click!_ All three wires were shut off by one lightning swirl of -Daisy’s fingers. - - -She sat aghast. The third voice had most assuredly been -Phil’s--Philip Caleb Vanbrugh’s. What had she done? What _hadn’t_ -she done? Then she became aware of a buzzing call. - -“Clavichord Arms,” she said primly in reply as she sought to rally -her shaky nerves. - -“That the house operator?” harshly demanded the husky voice. “I -called up my apartment--Apartment 60--a minute ago, and my wife was -talking over the phone. What number was she talking to?” - -“What apartment did you say?” asked Daisy. - -“Sixty!” - -“Apartment 60 hasn’t had a call this morning,” solemnly answered -Daisy, her throat tightening under the grip of outraged conscience. -“Nor it hasn’t sent in one, either.” - -“I’d swear that was my wife’s voice,” growled the man. “I couldn’t -place the man’s. But it was my wife’s, all right. And--” - -“It may ’a’ been Sarah Bernhardt’s voice, for all I know,” snapped -Daisy. “But it didn’t come from Apartment 60. Not any calls have -been turned in from there since I came on.” - -“You’re sure?” he asked in sour doubt. - -“You can look at my slip here on the desk,” pertly retorted Daisy. -“All the calls are marked on that.” - -“No,” said the man slowly, “I wont do that--because, if you’ve lied, -you wouldn’t be past altering the slip. What I’m going to do is to -ask the building’s superintendent for an itemized list of all the -calls from my apartment for the past month or two. He’s obliged to -furnish it on demand. That ought to tell me something.” - - -He hung up. Daisy sat gasping. Before her mental gaze ranged the -memory of forty-odd calls a month to Worth 9999-Z. Then she came to -a decision. Out into the marble-lined hallway she went. There she -corralled the second elevator-boy and bribed him with twenty-five -cents to take charge of the switchboard for a few minutes. A moment -or so later, a colored maid was ushering her into Apartment 60. - -In the middle of a garish living-room stood Daisy, trying -desperately to think straight. The curtains parted, and a woman came -into the room. Daisy blinked at her in bewilderment--then said: - -“I should like to speak to Mrs. Vanbrugh, please. It’s very -important.” - -“I’m Mrs. Vanbrugh,” answered the woman, eying the girl with -curiosity. - -“I--I mean Mrs. Madeline Vanbrugh,” faltered the girl. - -“I am Mrs. Madeline Vanbrugh,” was the answer, and now Daisy -recognized the voice, “--Mrs. Philip C. Vanbrugh. What can I do for -you?” - -Daisy could not answer at once. Around her dumfounded head the -bubbles were bursting like a myriad Roman-candle balls. - -This woman framed in the doorway was Madeline--_her_ Madeline? This -woman whose dumpy figure was swathed in a bedraggled negligee that -had once been clean! This woman whose scalp was haloed by a crescent -of kid-curlers that held in hard lumps her brass-hued front hair! -This woman with the hard, light eyes and sagging mouth-lines and -beaklike nose--this woman whose face was sallow and coarse, because -it had not yet received its daily dress of make-up! This--_this_ was -Madeline! - -“What can I do for you?” the woman was saying for the second time, -her early air of curiosity merging into one of dawning hostility. - -“I am the switchboard operator downstairs,” said Daisy faintly. - - -A look of terror that had all along lurked in the hard eyes now -sprang to new light. - -“What do you want of me?” - -“I want to tell you your husband heard the last part of your -phone-talk just now,” returned Daisy conscientiously, though her -heart was no longer in her mission of rescue. “He called me up about -it. I--” - -“You told him?” blithered the woman in panic. - -“I told him your apartment hadn’t had a call all morning.” - -“You _did_?” cried the woman, her sweet voice sharpening to a -peacock screech of relief. “Good for you! Good for _you_! And you -were perfectly right to come directly up here for your pay. What do -you think would be fair reward? Don’t be afraid to say. You’ve done -me a great service, and--” - -“I don’t understand you,” stammered Daisy. “I don’t understand you -at all. If you think I did this for money--” - -“My dear,” laughed the woman nervously, “we do everything for money. -So you needn’t be ashamed. We don’t always _say_ it’s for money. But -it is. That’s why I got into this scrape. My husband is the -stingiest man in New York. He pretends his business is on such a -ragged edge that he can’t give me any extra cash. But I know better. -That’s why I let myself get interested in Mr. Schreiner. He is a -widower, and he has more money than he can--” - -“Oh!” cried Daisy in sick horror. - -“So he’ll make it good to you for all that you’ve done for us,” -prattled on the woman, without noticing. “He’ll--” - -“That isn’t why I came up here!” broke in Daisy angrily. “And I -don’t want your filthy money, either. I wont touch it. I came up -here to warn you that your husband is going to--” - - -The buzz of the flat’s front-door bell interrupted her. The woman, -too, turned nervously to look. They heard the maid fumble with the -knob. Then some one brushed past the servant and into the -living-room. - -The intruder was a chunky and yellowish man, of late middle -years--incredibly bald of head and suspiciously black of eyebrows. -He caught sight of Mrs. Vanbrugh, who chanced to be standing between -him and Daisy. And he exclaimed: - -“I jumped into a taxi and hustled here, as soon as I left the phone. -I didn’t dare call up again. Do you suppose he recognized me?” - -Yes, the voice was indubitably the voice of Karl. But the fat and -elderly swain was in anything but a loverly mood. He was a-quake -with terror. Beads of sweat trickled down on his brows and mustache. -His yellowish complexion was blotchy from fear. He was not a pretty -sight. - -Daisy by this time should have been past surprise. Yet her -preconceived vision of Karl--of young, athletic, hero-featured -Karl--died hard and in much and sudden pain. Poor Daisy! Until he -spoke, she had mistaken him for the husband. - -“If he knew my voice,” babbled the man, “we’re up against it. I’d -better get out of town for a while, I suppose. Maybe he--” - -“Don’t worry!” interposed Madeline acidly. “You wont have to run -away from town and leave me to face it all. This girl has gotten us -out of it. She is the operator downstairs. Phil called up and asked -her all sorts of questions. And she told him the apartment hadn’t -had a call all morning. Isn’t she a brick?” - -A sound like the exhaust of an empty soda-siphon broke from between -Karl’s puffy lips--a sound of pure if porcine reaction from dread. - -“Good girl!” he croaked, still hoarse with recent fright. “_Dandy_ -girl!” - -He sought to pat Daisy approvingly on the shoulder with one pudgy -hand. She recoiled. - -“How much?” he asked jovially, not observing the stark repulsion in -her face and gesture as she shrank away. “How much, little girl? -You’ve done a mighty big stroke of business this day. What do you -say I owe you? Or will you leave it to me to do the right thing by -you?” - -He juggled a bloated wad of bills from his trousers pocket as he -spoke. And at his motion something in Daisy’s taut brain seemed to -snap. - - -The girl did not “see red.” She saw only two fat and greasy -creatures who thought she was as vile as they--who took it for -granted that she had done this thing to extort a rich tip from them, -for covering up their sin. And wrath gave her back her momentarily -lost power of speech. - -“_Oh!_” she cried in utter loathing, “you’d dare _pay_ me for trying -to help you? If I’d known what you both are, all the money in New -York wouldn’t have gotten me to lift a finger for you. You -horrible--” - -“There, there, my dear!” oilily soothed Karl. “You’re a little bit -excited. Calm down and tell us how much--” - -“If you don’t want pay,” shrilled Madeline, “what did you come here -for?” - -“What did I come here for?” echoed Daisy, white with rage. “To make -a fool of myself, of course. To warn you that your husband is going -to get the call-lists for the past month from the super, and find -out from them what numbers you’ve been calling up. That’s--” - -“Good Lord!” gabbled the woman in crass horror. - -Karl’s fat jaw dropped upon his fatter throat. He tried to speak. He -could only gargle. - -“That’s why I came here!” finished Daisy, striding past them toward -the door. “To warn you. And now I’ve done it. Your husband’s liable -to be streaking back home any minute now. And I’m going. And if -either of you says any more about money, I’ll--” - -She was making for the outer door. But for all her start, Karl -reached it three lengths ahead of her. He banged it shut after him -as he darted out. Through the panel Daisy could hear him ringing -frantically for the elevator. - -Daisy was following, when a choking sound made her turn back. The -woman still stood in the middle of the living-room. Her hard, light -eyes were dark and dilated. Her sallow face was haggard and ghastly. -Yet her features were unmoved. There was about her bearing and -expression a certain hopeless courage that lent dignity to the squat -figure. - - -Daisy hesitated--then turned back into the room. The woman stared -dully past her toward the doorway through which Karl had vanished. -She acknowledged the girl’s presence by muttering, in a curiously -dead voice, more to herself than to Daisy: - -“Men are queer animals, aren’t they? He has sworn to me, time and -again, that he’d stand by me to the end.” - -“Yes,” assented Daisy in perfect simplicity, “I’ve heard him say it -to you myself--twice.” - -“He’s gone,” went on the woman in that same dead voice so unlike her -own. “He’s gone. And I’m left to hold the bag. I--I think I’m cured. -There are worse things than a husband who loves you--even if he -can’t give you all the money you want to spend. Phil would never -have run away like that, from _anything_--not that the lesson is -likely to do me any good, now.” - -“Here!” exclaimed the girl, shaking the dazed Madeline roughly by -the shoulder. “I’m going to get you out of this. I don’t know why, -but I am. Maybe I’ve a bill of my own to pay, as well as you have. -We’ve all done some learning to-day, I guess. And learning isn’t on -the free-list.” - -“But--” - -“Go to the phone right away,” commanded Daisy, “and call up the -super. Tell him you’ve got to see him, up here, in a hurry. Act -scared. Tell him it can’t wait a single minute. Get him up here. -That’s the main thing. Then--then tell him you want new faucets in -the bathroom. Or tell him anything at all. Do as I say. Jump! There -isn’t much time to waste. Hubby’s sure to be hotfooting it home. And -when hubby comes, deny everything. _Deny!_ And keep on denying. He -wont have any proof, remember that. _He’ll have no proof._ Pay for -the lie by being a whole lot decenter to him, forever-after-amen.” - - -Moving away from the dumfounded woman, Daisy bolted out of the flat -and was lucky enough to catch a down-going elevator. She reached the -ground floor just as the building’s perplexed superintendent came to -the shaft on his way to answer Madeline’s urgent summons. - -Into the superintendent’s deserted office sped Daisy. Going directly -to his unlocked desk, she rummaged feverishly amid its drawers until -she found what she wanted. - -Crumpling and pocketing the telephone-sheets for the past two -months, she crossed to the file cabinet, hunted through a stack of -dusty papers and drew forth the sheaf of penciled telephone-slips -for the preceding year. - -Selecting from these the slips for the two corresponding months, she -put back the rest of the Sheaf. Then, changing with eraser and -pencil the date of the year on the two slips she had abstracted from -the cabinet, she put them in the drawer. After which, feeling oddly -weak about the knees, she started out of the office. - -At the door she almost collided with the returning superintendent. -Vexed at having been called upstairs in such haste on an utterly -trivial errand, he very naturally wreaked his ill-temper on the -first subordinate he chanced to meet--which was Daisy. - -“What are you doing away from your switchboard?” he snarled. “I -won’t stand for any loafing. Get that into your mind, once and for -all. What did you want in here, anyhow?” - -“I came in to see you, sir,” was the girl’s demure reply. - -“What do you want of me?” he rasped. - -“I wanted to tell you I’m leaving here to-morrow,” said Daisy. “I’m -going back to work at the Exchange. I’m lonesome on this job. There -aren’t enough things happening at the Clavichord Arms. It’s too -slow--not enough excitement for a live wire like me. That’s all, -sir.” - - -[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1917 issue -of Blue Book magazine.] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN THE CROWD *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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