"Detained?" The inflection is politely inquisitive.

"Yes, detained. You see--I--you--oh dammit, I was in jail." This time the pause that follows had to Oliver much of the quality of that little deadly hush that will silence all earth and sky in the moment before Last Judgment. Then--

"_In jail_," said the voice with an accent of utter finality.

"Yes--yes--oh it wasn't anything--I could explain in five seconds if I saw her--it was all a misunderstanding--I called the policeman a b.o.o.b but I didn't mean it--I don't see yet why he took offence--it was just--"

He was stifling inside the airless booth--he trickled all over. This was worse than being court-martialled. And still the voice did not speak.

"Can't you understand?" he yelled at last with more strength of lung than politeness.

"I quite understand, Mr. Crowe. You were in jail. No doubt we shall read all about it in tomorrow's papers."

"No you won't--I gave somebody else's name."

"Oh." Mrs. Ellicott was ticking off the data gathered so far on her fingers. The brutal quarrel with Nancy. The rush to the nearest blind-tiger. The debauch. The insult to Law. The drunken struggle.

The prison. The alias. And now the attempt to pretend that nothing had happened--when the criminal in question was doubtless swigging from a pocket-flask at this very moment for the courage to support his flagrant impudence in trying to see Nancy again. All this pa.s.sed through Mrs.

Ellicott's mind like a series of colored pictures in a Prohibition _brochure_.

"But I can explain that too. I can explain everything. Please, Mrs.

Ellicott--"

"Mr. Crowe, this conversation has become a very painful one. Would it not be wiser to close it?"

Oliver felt as if Mrs. Ellicott had told him to open his bag and when he did so had pointed sternly at a complete set of burglar's tools on top of his dress-shirts.

"Can-I-see-Nancy?" he ended desperately, the words all run together:

But the voice that answered was very firm with rect.i.tude.

"Nancy has not the slightest desire to see you, Mr. Crowe. Now or ever." Mrs. Ellicott asked pardon inwardly for the lie with a false humility--if Nancy will not save herself from this young man whom she has always disliked and who has just admitted to being a jailbird in fact and a drunkard by implication, she will.

"I should think you would find it easier hearing this from me than you would from her. She has found it easier to say." "But, Mrs. Ellicott--"

"There are things that take a little too much explaining to explain, Mr.

Crowe." The meaning seemed vague but the tone was doomlike enough. "And in any case" the voice ended with a note of flat triumph, "Nancy will not be home until dinnertime so you could not possibly telephone her before the departure of your train."

"Oh."

"Good-by, Mr. Crowe," and a click at the other end showed that Mrs.

Ellicott had hung up the receiver, leaving him to shriek "But listen--"

pitiably into the little black mouthpiece in front of him until Central cut in on him angrily with "Say, whatcha tryin' to do, fella? Break my ear?"

XXIII

After cindery hours in a day coach--the fine and the loss of his Pullman reservation have left him with less than three dollars in cash--Oliver crawls into Vanamee and Company's about four in the afternoon. Everybody but Mrs. Wimple and Mr. Tickler is out of Copy for the moment and the former greets him with coy wit.

"Been taking your vacation at Newport, Crowie? Or didja sneak the Frisco account away from Brugger's Service when you were out West?"

"Oh, no, got jugged--that was all," says Oliver quite truthfully if tiredly and Mrs. Wimple crows at the jest with high laughter. Oliver marvels at the fact that everybody should seem to think it so humorous to be jailed.

"Why, Crowie, you naughty little boy! Oh mischief, mischief!" and she sc.r.a.pes one index finger over the other at him in a try for errant childishness. Then she and her perfume come closer and this time she looks around before she speaks and there is some little real concern in her voice.

"Listen, Crowie--you better watch your step, boy--I'm telling you straight. Old Man Alley was real sore when you didn't blow in yesterday--it was one of Vanamee's bad days when his eye gets twitchy and he was rearing around cursing everybody out and giving an oration on office discipline that'd a made a goat go laugh itself ill. And then Alley got hold of Delier and they are both talking about you--I know because Delier said 'Oh give him another chance' and Alley said 'What's the use, Deller--he's been here eight months and he doesn't seem to really get the hang of things,' in that snippy little way and then 'I can't stand breaches of discipline like this.' You know how nervous it gets him if as much as a fastener is out of place on his desk--and Winslow's got a kid cousin he wants to put in here and if you don't act like mama's darling for a while--"

She is ready to go on indefinitely, but Oliver thanks her abstractedly--it is decent of the old girl after all--grunts "Guess I better start in looking busy now, Mrs. Wimple!" and sits down at his desk.

A note from Deller with five pencil sketches attached of the new trade figures for Brittlekin--two bloated looking children with inkblot eyes looking greedily at an enormous bar of peanut candy. "Dear Crowe: Will you give me copy on these as soon as possible--something snappy this time.--E. B. D." A memorandum, "Mr. Piper called you 4 P.M. Monday.

Wishes you to call him as soon as possible." The United Steel Frame Pulley layouts and another note from Deller, "This is LATE. DO something." Back to pulleys again and the crowded sweat-box of the copy room and twenty-five dollars a week with the raise gone glimmering now--

And Nancy is lost.

Oliver sits looking at the layouts for United Steel Frame Pulleys for half-an-hour without really doing anything but sharpen and resharpen a pencil. Mrs. Wimple wonders if he's sick--he ain't white or anything but he looks just like Poppa did the time he came back and told Momma, "Momma the bank has bust and our funds has went." She watches him eagerly--gee, it'd be exciting if he fainted or did anything queer! He said he'd been in jail too--Mrs. Wimple shivers--but he's so comical you never can tell what he really means--that way he looks may be just what she saw in a movie once about "the pallid touch of the prison." If it's indigestion, though, he ought to try Pepsolax--that certainly eases you up right--

Finally Oliver stacks all the layouts together in a careful pile and goes in to see Mr. Alley. That precise and toothy little sub-deity does not seem extremely enthusiastic over his return.

"Well, Mr. Crowe, so you got back? What detained you?"

"Police" says Oliver with a faint smile and Mr. Alley laughs dutifully enough though rather in a "here, here, we must get down to business"

way. Then he fusses with his pencil a little.

"I'm glad you came in, Crowe. I wanted to see you about that matter. It is not so much that we begrudge--but in a place like this where everyone must work shoulder to shoulder--and purely as a point of office discipline--Mr. Vanamee is rather rigid in regard to that and your work so far has really hardly justified--"

"Oh that's all right, Mr. Alley" breaks in Oliver, though not rudely, he is much too f.a.gged to be rude, "I'm leaving at the end of the week if it's convenient to you."

"Well, _really_, Mr. Crowe." But in spite of his diplomatic surprise he hardly seems distressfully perturbed. "I hope it is not because you feel we have treated you unfairly--" he begins again a little anxiously--under all his feathers of fussiness he is essentially kindly.

"Oh no, I'm just leaving."

There are more diplomatic exchanges but when they have ended Oliver goes back to Copy, remarks "Quitting Sat.u.r.day, Mrs. Wimple," gets his hat and goes off a quarter of an hour earlier than he ever has before, leaving the rest of Copy to match pennies and opinions till closing time on the question as to whether he fired himself or was fired.

XXIV

Jane Ellen swayed back and forth in the porch hammock, hugging herself with fat arms. All her dolls lay spread out wretchedly on the floor beneath her, she had stripped them of every rag and they had the dejected appearance of victims ready for sacrifice to Baal. "The Choolies are mad!" she sang to herself, "The Choolies are mad!"

It had been a perfectly sensible idea to try and water the flowers on the parlor carpet with her doll's watering pot--those flowers hadn't had any water for an awful long time. But Mother had punished her in the Third Degree which was by hairbrush and Aunt Elsie had taken the watering-pot away and Rosalind and d.i.c.kie had put on such offensively virtuous expressions as soon as they heard her being punished that she was mad at them all. And not ordinarily mad--not mad just by herself--the Choolies were divinely incensed as well.

"The Choolies are mad!" she hummed again like a battle-cry "Choolies are dolls and all the Choolies are mad!"

The Choolies were only mad on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to do was to leave Jane Ellen quite entirely alone.

"The Choolies are mad, mad, mad!" she chanted end chanted, her plump legs swinging, her mouth set like a prophet's calling down lightnings on Babylon the splendid.