“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—­”

“I’ll go down.  Maybe it’s the plumbing.  Or the radiator.  Did you ask?”

“No, nothing like that.  She kept talking about a wail.”

“A what!”

“A wail.  A kind of groaning, you know.  And then dull raps on the wall, behind the bed.”

“Now look here, Ed Healy; I get up at 6:30, but I can’t see a joke before ten.  If you’re trying to be funny!—­”