Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/355

Rh insufficient information. I'll withdraw my men immediately."

"You'd better apologize to Mrs. Voorhees It's her studio."

"Well ladies and gents," the detective began in a loud cheerful voice, "we've made a little mistake and we're very sorry Accidents will happen "

Ellen slipped into the side room to get her hat and coat. She stood some time before the mirror powdering her nose. When she went out into the studio again everybody was talking at once. Men and women stood round with sheets and bathrobes draped over their scanty dancingclothes. The detectives had melted away as suddenly as they came. Oglethorpe was talking in loud impassioned tones in the middle of a group of young men.

"The scoundrels to attack women," he was shouting, red in the face, waving his headdress in one hand. "Fortunately I was able to control myself or I might have committed an act that I should have regretted to my dying day It was only with the greatest selfcontrol"

Ellen managed to slip out, ran down the stairs and out into drizzly streets. She hailed a taxi and went home. When she had got her things off she called up George Baldwin at his house. "Hello George, I'm terribly sorry I had to trouble you and Mr. Winthrop. Well if you hadnt happened to say at lunch you'd be there all the evening they probably would be just piling us out of the black maria at the Jefferson Market Court Of course it was funny. I'll tell you about it sometime, but I'm so sick of all that stuff Oh just everything like that aesthetic dancing and literature and radicalism and psychoanalysis Just an overdose I guess Yes I guess that's it George I guess I'm growing up."

The night was one great chunk of black grinding cold. The smell of the presses still in his nose, the chirrup of