Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/72

 I ever need a' arm amputated when you get to be a doc, I'll come around and let you talk it off. Strawberry pop, gents?"

The front room of Barney's was an impressionistic painting in which a pool-table, piles of cigarettes, chocolate bars, playing cards, and pink sporting papers were jumbled in chaos. The back room was simpler: cases of sweet and thinly flavored soda, a large ice-box, and two small tables with broken chairs. Barney poured, from a bottle plainly marked Ginger Ale, two glasses of powerful and appallingly raw whisky, and Clif and Martin took them to the table in the corner. The effect was swift. Martin's confused sorrows turned to optimism. He told Clif that he was going to write a book exposing idealism, but what he meant was that he was going to do something clever about his dual engagement. He had it! He would invite Leora and Madeline to lunch together, tell them the truth, and see which of them loved him. He whooped, and had another whisky; he told Clif that he was a fine fellow, and Barney that he was a public benefactor, and unsteadily he retired to the telephone, which was shut off from public hearing in a closet.

At the Zenith General Hospital he got the night superintendent, and the night superintendent was a man frosty and suspicious. "This is no time to be calling up a probationer! Half-past eleven! Who are you, anyway?"

Martin checked the "I'll damn' soon tell you who I am!" which was his natural reaction, and explained that he was speaking for Leora's invalid grand-aunt, that the poor old lady was very low, and if the night superintendent cared to take upon himself the murder of a blameless gentlewoman—

When Leora came to the telephone he said quickly, and soberly now, feeling as though he had come from the menace of thronging strangers into the security of her presence:

"Leora? Sandy. Meet me Grand lobby to-morrow, twelve-thirty Must! Important! Fix 't somehow—your aunt's sick."

"All right, dear. G' night," was all she said.

It took him long minutes to get an answer from Madeline's flat, then Mrs. Fox's voice sounded, sleepily, quaveringly:

"Yes, yes?"

S Martin."

"Who is it? Who is it? What is it? Are you calling the Fox apartment?"