I. "Ah, come!"

"We'll have dinner first at that cute little Cafe Bretone you've been
telling me about," says Vee, "and go up to see the Blakes afterwards."

Yes, that was the program we followed. And without the aid of a guide we
located this Umpty Umpt street. The number is about half way down the
block that runs from upper Broadway to Riverside Drive. It's one of the
narrow streets, you know, and the scenery is just as cheerful as a
section of the Hudson River tube on a foggy night. Nothing but
seven-story apartment buildings on either side; human hives, where the
only thing that can be raised is the rent, which the landlord attends to
every quarter.

Having lived out in the near-country for a couple of years, I'd most
forgotten what ugly, gloomy barracks these big apartment buildings were.
Say, if they built state prisons like that, with no more sun or air in
the cells, there'd be an awful howl. But the Rosenheimers and the Max
Blums and the Gilottis can run up jerry built blocks with 8x10 bedrooms
openin' on narrow airshafts, and livin' rooms where you need a couple of
lights burnin' on sunny days, and nobody says a word except to beg the
agent to let 'em pay $150 a month or so for four rooms and bath. I can
feel Vee give a shudder as we dives into the tunnel.

"But really," says she, "I suppose it must be very nice, only half a
block from the Drive, and with such an imposing entrance."

"Sure!" says I. "Just as cosy as being tucked away in a safety deposit
vault every night. That's what makes some of these New Yorkers so
patronizin' and haughty when they happen to stray out to way stations
and crossroads joints where the poor Rubes live exposed continual to
sunshine and fresh air and don't seem to know any better."

"Just think!" says Vee. "Lucy Lee's home down in Virginia was one of
those delightful old Colonial houses set on a hill, with more than a
hundred acres of farm land around it. And Captain Blake must have been
used to an outdoor life. He's a civil engineer, I believe. But then,
with the honeymoon barely over, I suppose they don't mind."

"We might ask 'em," I suggests.

"Don't you dare, Torchy!" says she.

By that time, though, we're ready to interview the fuzzy-haired West
Indian brunette in charge of the 'phone desk in one corner of the
marble wainscoted lobby. And when he gets through givin' the hot
comeback to some tenant who has dared to protest that he's had the wrong
number, he takes h