But he did not forget that he was, just now, also a knight, of sorts, to a lady in distress.

  “Feel better now, miss?” he inquired.

  “Oh my—yes!” she said, smiling faintly at him, and without a trace now of her former weakness of voice. “I—I don’t know whatever came over me. Just one of those things, I s’pose. Well, you certainly were a swell guy—just to take a mere strange woman you never saw before—and buy her a drink.”

  “At 5 cents?” he echoed. “Why 5 cents, miss, isn’t anyth—in fact I don’t see how they sell gin here at only 5 cents. Seems to me—”

  He stopped. For her face held a downright quizzical look that puzzled him. But she answered his conundrum, though jokingly.

  “It’s probably the old case,” she said, smiling, “of losing money on each sale—but making a profit if the volume of sales is big enough!”

  The sheer absurdity she had set forth was by no means lost on him. Even though, due to that elephantine drink of gin, the blood right now was rushing through him. He grinned appreciatively. But his grin faded.

  “Now could you perhaps,” he asked solicitously, “eat something? If so, I’ll order a sandwich or someth—”

  “Oh my, no,” she said hastily. “I had quite a copious breakfast—but late.”

  “I also the same,” returned Quiribus. “In the depot.” A silence fell, and he endeavoured to be polite. “You—ah—work here in Chicago, miss?” Her face grew pained, distressed.

  “Gee, I—I guess I do. I—I don’t know—whether I do—or I don’t.”

  “Why—how’s that?”

  “Oh,” she said wearily, “I’m trying to get aboard a, news­paper here in Chicago. Oh no, I’m not a reporter. I’m a—by occupation, I’m a private secretary. But nothing’s open in that line just now, it seems. So, more or less in desperation—for I happened to be pretty much up against it—I went to a newspaper, and asked for a berth, and the first assignment the city editor gave me was to get hold of a man friend, and get the facts—for a story—and the highlights too, as he called them, that would make the story real and convincing to the readers—on how easy it is for utter strangers to rent a room in this district, without baggage or anything—a room, you know, to drink in, and—”

  “I think I fully understand, yes,” he helped her out gravely. “Yes.”

  “But everything’s gone wrong,” she continued, but almost tearfully now. “For the gentleman who was to help me out—a kindly, fatherly gentleman of about 50 years of age, who lives in the place where I have a small room—left town suddenly. And as I walked around here just now, all alone, and by myself—just to—to sort of look the region over—and to see if maybe I could invent my whole story—though good heavens. I wouldn’t know how to pull ‘highlights’ right out of thin air—well, as I walked around here sort of just looking the region over, it—it looked so awful—so—so coarse and—and ribald, don’t you know?—and remembering that mean city editor’s saying, ‘Don’t you come back without the story, and don’t you come back, either, with anything faked, for we’ll check you,’ I—” Her face fell a mile. “You see, I—I just got out of a hospital a few days ago—after an operation. Where I spent all my savings. And it—it sort of got me down—that I wasn’t even able any more to catch myself a simple job.” She sighed dolorously; looked down­right grim.

  “Seems to me,” commented Quiribus wrathfully, “that they toss out to a newcomer like you about the meanest job they got—not that I know anything about newspapering. For I don’t. But what I mean, miss, is that the job they’ve handed you is a kind of a—a dirty one—for a nice girl like you. For going up into hotels, like must be in this district here, and registering, and all that, is sort of—but did you tell this editor fellow you were just out of a hospital?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But he said it was nothing to him. He said he was running a newspaper; not a convalescent home.”

  “The—the dirty dog,” retorted Quiribus. “I’d sure like to turn him over one of my knees, and lay just one good slap, with just one hand, where it’d teach him how to be civil to worn—but here!—that wouldn’t do you any good, would it? You have to get your facts, or else! Starve, maybe. Your facts and—and highlights—but just what are high­lights, miss?”

  “Highlights?” said the girl. “Well highlights, the editor said, are—” She stopped. “Do you know, my kind big friend, that you’re really a most intelligent lumberj—uh—worker from the forests? That is,” she added, almost apologetically, “you are, are you not, from out of town?”

  “Oh yes,” he admitted. And proceeded to tell her the name of that town from which he had come to Chicago. “I’m from a small place, you’ve probably never heard tell of in your whole life—River’s Fork it’s called.” He was thoughtful. “Well, that’s sure mighty nice of you to think I’m an intelligent lumberjack.” And now explained to her, and truthfully, why if what she said were true, it was. “I’ve had precious little schooling, Miss—but a man who brought me up did his very best to teach me—just about all he could. So thanks a lot for that compliment of yours. For it’s a kind of a testimonial to him. But when it comes to lumberjacks and all that, have you, after all, ever met any—to be able to say all that about me?” He fixed a troubled gaze on her.

  “Only one or two in my whole life,” was her swift reply. “And those only for an instant. But they were very—uncouth. While you—but you were asking about high­lights. Well, this editor said those are the little points in an occurrence—points of—of colour and—and humour—that make the account of an occurrence seem real and—and interesting.”

  “I get that perfectly,” nodded Quiribus. “And which means,” he added, “that you can’t fake such things?”

  “That’s right,” she agreed hastily. “Well,” she sighed, looking down at herself regretfully, “It looks like a nice newspaper career, for this girlie, is now gone a-glimmering. For now—”

  “But here—wait, miss! You’re in no position to run around town and look for jobs. If you’ve just had an operation. Why—that’s why you got all faint and—and gonerish a little while ago. Now you say all this fellow really wants you to do is to—well could I, maybe, help you out?—to get your facts? And these things he calls high­ lights? If I could—”

  He stopped, almost embarrassedly.

  “Could you?” she echoed delightedly. “Why gee—I’ll say you could! If you really—but you wouldn’t want to bother, would you?”

  “Why not?” said Quiribus. “So long as nothing wrong happens, what differ—”

  “But something wrong might—could happen,” she said gravely. “Me—alone in a room with a huge man like you—”

  “Now wait!” he expostulated. “Nothing, I tell you, will happen in a room with me and you—but I see you’re not altogether convinced, miss—I see it right in your black eyes—then let me put it this way: nothing could happen in a room with me and you—except what you’d want to say would happen. Now does that sort of—of reassure you better? Because it’s—it’s more down to earth? If it doesn’t, it ought to, because—that is—” he broke off—“a nice girl like you would be plenty fixed in her mind about—about things like that. In fact, to put your little mind at peace about what’ll happen, I’ll say, here and now, that if you want to put in your time in that room telling me the story of your life—I’d be plumb delighted to listen to that.”

  “Would you—really?” she said happily. “Gee, you’re swell! And a queer one, too. But that’s because, I s’pose, you’re so gigan—uh—big? It’s—but what’s your name? Mine’s Gertrude Elliott.”

  “Glad to meet you, Gertrude. Mine’s Brown—Quiribus Brown.”

  “Glad to meet you, Queer’bus.”

  The waiter was back at their table.

  “Anything else, ladies and gents?”

  “I guess not,” said Quiribus.” No. We—”

  “Yes, there is,” said the girl hastily. “Could you fetch us—for taking out—a cold bottle of ginger-ale?”

  The waiter gave a moue.

  “Cert’ny can, leddy.”

  He was off. The girl spoke.

  “I—I hope you don’t mind, Queer’bus, that I ordered that? We can at least have something to drink—while we talk.”

  “Mind?” said Quiribus. “Why say—I’m glad you had sense enough to think to! For I didn’t. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this gin they serve here gives a person one awful thirst—in about 30 minutes.”

  Now a peculiar, even embarrassing, silence fell on them both. The girl looked troubledly, almost frightenedly, regretful. With respect to her project.

  But now the waiter was back. A huge quart bottle show­ing its form in a brown paper bag in his hand.

  “Two bits, folks!” he told them defiantly. “But on’y a dime—if you drink it here—and order 2 drinks to go with it. Which’ll it be?”

  But Quiribus, another quarter all in readiness under one big finger-tip, answered that attractive proposition by bring­ing up a further dime from his trousers pocket, and silently sliding quarter and dime over and waving away any change. The waiter, with a shrug, scurried off again.

  “Shall we get out of here, Gertrude?” Quiribus now asked the girl.

  “Yes,” she returned hurriedly. “Let’s! But—wait!” She had been looking around, in back of him, and now spoke. “Just before I got taken so faint outside,” she said, “I noted a hotel sign over the door next this tap-room. And now I notice a solid panel door over there—with the word ‘EXIT’ painted on it—that evidently—in fact, it would absolutely have to, wouldn’t it?—lead into the inner hallway of that hotel. Maybe we can amble right through there—as though we’re a—a little dizzy and only trying to get out of here—and getting out the hard way—but in that way avoid going out on to the sidewalk together and—and going up in that place together—in broad daylight. You know how it is, Queer’bus. Everybody probably would take no—that is, gawk at—at—”

  “A bloodthirsty giant with a poor helpless girl in tow,” nodded Quiribus. “Yes, I understand. Being gawked at, and everything I do noted, is the bane of my life. But you’re right, though—on how best to get upstairs.”

  But now she gripped the table edge fiercely with her fingers, as though to prevent being dragged forcibly away.

  “Oh dear!” she said desperately. “I’ve half a notion to—I—I wish I’d never started out on this awful proj—”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said masterfully. “Keep in mind that job you’ve got to get. Just follow me. I’ll do all the—the dirty work.”

  He rose, before she could express any weakening of pur­pose. Clapped his striped knitted cap on his head, and took up the ginger-ale. She rose too, helpless, seemingly, in the inexorable face of circumstance. He led the way quickly to that door which appeared to be available as an exit—to somewhere! And shoving it open, found that it was. At least to and into a gloomy hallway, lighted only by light coming through ground-glass panels set in a street door. And with a flight of wooden steps going upward to some where. On one of the panels could be read, in reverse, the word “HOTEL,” black against the light. Quiribus held the door open for the girl. Who herself crept through. He let it to again. And looked about, on behalf of them both. The stairway next them could be seen, upon one’s gazing upward, to ascend, via a number of landings—and by the fact that it never turned backward upon itself at any point, but went undeviatingly upward and onward to the very rear of the building—to what was at least a fourth story, and at its far topmost top was visible a sunny window which appeared to light the whole stairway down at least as far as the next-to-topmost landing. Brass edging was on every step. But no carpeting at any point; not even rubber matting.

  At the landing just above the floor where they stood could be seen a small rickety desk, carrying a goose-neck desk-light, and burning, evidently as a sign that business was going on, even if nobody was in sight.

  Quiribus led the way upstairs to it, the girl following. On the desk next the goose-neck light was an open 10-cent-store clothbound ledger, with a string-attached pencil and a rusty push-bell. But he did not have to press the push-bell. For an old crone, with white hair, and clad in a dirty wrapper, popped out of a little door back of the ledger-carrying desk. Her mouth, at sight of this enormous man with whom she was confronted, popped ludicrously open, revealing many grotesque gaps in her upper teeth; but she closed her mouth promptly, and with a slight shake of herself, apparently recovered her poise.

  Quiribus did all the disagreeable work involved. “Could we—could we—could we,” he stammered, “obtain a room? We’ve—we’ve just got into town, and haven’t got our bag—”

  “Sign here, Mister Smith,” the old woman said acerbically, and shoved over the ledger.

  Quiribus turned and grinned at the girl. “Highlight,” he said meaningfully.

  “Not so high you can’t reach it,” the old crone said sourly, then corrected herself irritably. “Oh, is that your wiff’s name? Thought you was asking about the light in the room. And—yeah, right there under that last John Smith.” For Quiribus was signing. Was signing, in fact, “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, New York City.”

  The old woman, however, didn’t even bother to look at the signature. She was, in fact, taking out a bunch of keys. “Fifty cents,” she said decisively. “Now!” Quiribus, shifting the bag-encased bottle of ginger-ale, brought up a 50-cent piece from the rapidly dwindling store of change in his trousers pocket. Threw another glance back at the girl, who stood with eyes slightly downcast. And which glance said plainly: “Another point, Gertrude, for your newspaper article.”

  The old crone, dropping the 50-cent piece neither in a cash drawer, nor the desk drawer, but safely in a pocket of her wrapper, and saying curtly, “This way,” now led the way up the stairway. To the next landing, on one side of which was a square embrasure in the wall on which 3 thickly painted black-number-marked doors faced, and one of which doors, in the architectural scheme of things, must have given on to some inner corridor or hallway that gave access to the entire floor; and on the other side of which landing—perhaps to comply with technical hotel “requirements”!—were two items of furnishings: one being a telephone booth, triple-glassed, as though it had once reposed in the noisiest of drug-stores, and over whose old-fashioned vertical instru­ment inside could be seen—thanks to the light that came down the remaining flight from that window at the top—hanging a crudely pencil-lettered sign that read USE A NICKLE. On the street side of the booth, but on the wall itself, hung a fire extinguisher, scarlet enamelled, but its once brassy trimming now green with age; while off a few feet from the booth, on its other side, stood a rusty iron frame­work containing—either in legal compliance with some ancient hotel regulation, or because at some by-gone day there had been a huge convention that had filled all of Chicago’s rooms—a dusty inverted glass demijohn that originally eons ago, at best, had contained distilled water, or any other kind, since the stack of paper drinking-cups standing alongside it in a holder were black with grime and fly-specks.

  But entirely past this landing and its evidently seldom or never used hotel accoutrements the old crone continued to lead the way, on, on toward the top floor, that top landing, where already it could be seen that bright window up there was not transparent at all, but was merely translucent, being smeared over with some kind of fluid scouring powder.

  And thus to the top landing they proceeded, the crone, momentarily silhouetted against the chalk-coated window, turning wearily off and into a wall embrasure like the one on the landing below, except that here but two doors were present: and thrusting one of her keys into the lock of the one which directly faced the stairway top, she threw it open and wearily stood aside.

  A dingy small room, looking out of the very rear of the building, showed itself. It contained, as Quiribus, piloting his now almost reluctant companion firmly into it, saw, a cheap bureau with a cracked mirror, a double iron bed with scaling white paint, a thin once-Axminster pattern rug, and a single hard kitchen chair. In one corner, also, was a rickety washstand, carrying atop itself a huge china pitcher and a cracked china bowl. The bed itself had two pillows, both clean, and a much-mended and darned white bedspread; but the green-papered walls about the room were stained and spattered in many places as though celebrants, for the last 20 years or so, had often and again tossed whisky squarely against one or another of those walls.

  The one back window of the room, with tattered blue shade dropping only a foot or so, looked down on a dingy junk-filled back yard, but at least looked directly towards the rear, windowless, many-storied face of a huge skyscraper cold-storage warehouse on another street. It was a room, this room, that might be said to be ideal for some purposes in life—if not, perhaps, for all.

  And it was furnished, moreover, with more than mere furniture, too! For on the bureau stood a glass pitcher with two clean tumblers, a bottle-opener, a can-opener, and a heavy glass ash receiver with a box of paper matches stuck in the match-holder. And in one corner—the corner not occupied by the washstand—was the pièce de résistance of the whole place—even the piece de luxe, it might be said: a great slop jar, no less, embellished about with voluptuous hand-painted red roses, but gauntly, glaringly, yawningly uncovered by so much as a single knobless cover.

  “Make yourselves at home,” the crone was saying smile-lessly, turning off. “Though the four bits is f’r 3 hours only: if you ain’t out o’ here in 3 hours, you got to pay again.”

  Quiribus grinned friendlily at the girl, to impress on her that the article she had referred to was actually being written, bit by bit, in front of their eyes.

  With which, he gently and politely closed the door. That operation revealing that it was equipped on the inside with a heavy bolt. And as the crone’s feet could be heard to shuffle wearily down the stairway outside, Quiribus and his new­found acquaintance were quite alone.

 

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