Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/54

 peopled with crying babies and unkempt adults. He also found that the person who answered to the name of Pomeroy was a person of color, a negress who leered at him filthily, a black, shapeless mass who blended perfectly with the dead and gone odors that filled the dark, uncarpeted halls.

At the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth Pomeroy his luck was no better and at two o’clock in the afternoon he found himself at upper Broadway, nearly out of gasoline, hungry, and just about beginning to be angry. It was a curious thing that people all had to go and pick out one name—as though there weren’t enough to go around. Now here was Jessica Pomeroy—anybody seeing her would know that the name belonged to her and her alone—why go out of your way, that being the case, and pick on the name Pomeroy when you could just as well select Cohen or Flanagan or Rocco or something equally flagrant? Val was beginning to be exasperated with people—they showed so little originality!

They stopped at a restaurant to eat—Eddie eating lunch with his employer. This was nothing new. Eddie often lunched with his employer when they were alone. There was more between them than is usual between master and man. They had served on the western front together, they had quenched their thirst in muddy water out of the same canteen and they had cursed the same second lieutenants together. The friendship between them was only thinly disguised by the superficial veil of conventionality that present day social custom had thrown over them.

Over their meal Val explained to Eddie just what it was he was trying to do and how he was going about