verin', 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!--"

"Funny! Why, say, listen, Mrs. Foote. I may be a night clerk, but I'm
not so low as to get you out at half past six to spring a thing like
that in fun. I mean it. So did she."

"But a kind of moaning! And then dull raps!"

"Those are her words. A kind of m--"

"Le