PAGE 3
The Three Of Them
by
Until very recently. Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha McCoy. She still sang her every-day, human songs about every-day, human people. But you failed, somehow, to recognise them as such. They sounded sawdust-stuffed. And you were likely to hear the man behind you say, “Yeh, but you ought to have heard her five years ago. She’s about through.”
Such was six-eighteen. Martha Foote, luxuriating in that one delicious moment between her 6:30 awakening, and her 6:31 arising, mused on these things. She thought of how, at eleven o’clock the night before, her telephone had rung with the sharp zing! of trouble. The voice of Irish Nellie, on night duty on the sixth floor, had sounded thick-brogued, sure sign of distress with her.
“I’m sorry to be a-botherin’ ye, Mis’ Phut. It’s Nellie speakin’–Irish Nellie on the sixt’.”
“What’s the trouble, Nellie?”
“It’s that six-eighteen again. She’s goin’ on like mad. She’s carryin’ on something fierce.”
“What about?”
“Th’–th’ blankets, Mis’ Phut.”
“Blankets?–“
“She says–it’s her wurruds, not mine–she says they’re vile. Vile, she says.”
Martha Foote’s spine had stiffened. “In this house! Vile!”
If there was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, they were her especial fad. “Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold snake-work are all well and good,” she was wont to say, “and so are American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. But it’s the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel first or second class.” And now this, from Nellie.
“I know how ye feel, an’ all. I sez to ‘er, I sez: ‘There never was a blanket in this house,’ I sez, ‘that didn’t look as if it cud be sarved up wit’ whipped cr-ream,’ I sez, ‘an’ et,’ I sez to her; ‘an’ fu’thermore,’ I sez–“
“Never mind, Nellie. I know. But we never argue with guests. You know that rule as well as I. The guest is right–always. I’ll send up the linen-room keys. You get fresh blankets; new ones. And no arguments. But I want to see those–those vile–“
“Listen, Mis’ Phut.” Irish Nellie’s voice, until now shrill with righteous anger, dropped a discreet octave. “I seen ’em. An’ they are vile. Wait a minnit! But why? Becus that there maid of hers–that yella’ hussy–give her a body massage, wit’ cold cream an’ all, usin’ th’ blankets f’r coverin’, an’ smearin’ ’em right an’ lift. This was afther they come back from th’ theayter. Th’ crust of thim people, using the iligent blankets off’n the beds t’–“
“Good night, Nellie. And thank you.”
“Sure, ye know I’m that upset f’r distarbin’ yuh, an’ all, but–“
Martha Foote cast an eye toward the great walnut bed. “That’s all right. Only, Nellie–“
“Yesm’m.”
“If I’m disturbed again on that woman’s account for anything less than murder–“
“Yesm’m?”
“Well, there’ll be one, that’s all. Good night.”
Such had been Monday’s cheerful close.
Martha Foote sat up in bed, now, preparatory to the heroic flinging aside of the covers. “No,” she assured herself, “it can’t be as bad as yesterday.” She reached round and about her pillow, groping for the recalcitrant hairpin that always slipped out during the night; found it, and twisted her hair into a hard bathtub bun.
With a jangle that tore through her half-wakened senses the telephone at her bedside shrilled into life. Martha Foote, hairpin in mouth, turned and eyed it, speculatively, fearfully. It shrilled on in her very face, and there seemed something taunting and vindictive about it. One long ring, followed by a short one; a long ring, a short. “Ca-a-an’t it? Ca-a-an’t it?”
“Something tells me I’m wrong,” Martha Foote told herself, ruefully, and reached for the blatant, snarling thing.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Foote? This is Healy, the night clerk. Say, Mrs. Foote, I think you’d better step down to six-eighteen and see what’s–“
“I am wrong,” said Martha Foote.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Go on. Will I step down to six-eighteen and–?”
“She’s sick, or something. Hysterics, I’d say. As far as I could make out it was something about a noise, or a sound or–Anyway, she can’t locate it, and her maid says if we don’t stop it right away–“