Leonidas sat down in the leather chair and continued to drink in details. The phonograph radio. The Sargent portrait of his grandfather over the fireplace. His grandfather had been a particularly unpleasant man who never said a kindly word or did a kindly thing, but he looked splendid hung on the wall.
An envelope fell off the leather chair arm. Leonidas picked it up and drew out a card.
“Colonel Rutherford Carpenter, United States Marine Corps, Retired,” had been scratched out. On the back was a message.
“Cassie says you need this. Please accept it as a token of my esteem at having kept my sister out of jail for the record space of ten months.”
No one, Leonidas thought with a rush of emotion, had any nicer friends.
Only one thing bothered him. Cassie had apparently wangled all his worldly possessions from the storage warehouse, but so far he had seen no books. Where were his books?
He crossed the hall and opened the door directly opposite.
“Ah!” he said. “Ah!”
Shelves of books rose from the floor to the ceiling, two stories up. That was all there was in the room, just shelves and shelves of books. Except for a flat-topped natural wood desk, built into a little enclosure at one corner.
There was a sign beside the inkwell.
“From Dow, who designed it.”
Leonidas glowed.
If this sort of thing kept up much longer, he was going to dissolve into tears.
He kept wondering how one got to the top shelves, when he suddenly became aware of the ladder. Then, with a cry of pleasure, he discovered the tracks that ran around the linoleum floor, close to the shelves.
It was like a shoe-store ladder. It ran around.
Then Leonidas opened his mouth and hooted.
It was electric!
Climbing the ladder, he pressed the starter button.
Around and around the room he rolled until at last he took a firm grip on himself and turned off the motor.
“Wholeheartedly,” Leonidas said, “I approve of this house!”
He was about to telephone Cassie Price and assure her on that point when the back-door chimes sounded again.
It was the man who had been there before.
“Listen, mister/’ he said before Leonidas had a chance to speak, “you don’t understand. You got the wrong icebox, see? And I got sent to take it back and give you the right one. You got a cheap one. You paid for a better one. More high-priced, see?”
“I don’t want it.”
“But you ain’t got the right one. You got a cheap model, see?”
“My good man,” Leonidas said, “let’s have no more loose talk about the refrigerator situation. If a more expensive one was ordered and paid for, cause me to be sent a check for the difference. I am perfectly satisfied. Is that clear?”
“You mean, you don’t want it?”
“If ever a nail,” Leonidas said, “was squarely hit, you have hit it. I am satisfied. I don’t wish another refrigerator. Furthermore,” he added, “it is not my desire to see more of you. Be gone.”
“Huh?”
“Scram,” Leonidas said.
He had hardly time to open and close the red refrigerator half a dozen times when bells began to ring.
Leonidas never batted an eye. After the refrigerator and the ladder, it seemed only natural that his front-door bell should merrily inform him that the Campbells were coming, tra la, tra la.
It was Cassie and Dow, of course.
Leonidas put on his pince-nez, adjusted his chefs cap to a rakish angle, and swung the door open wide.
A man stood there, urgently holding out a brush.
Leonidas took it.
“Are you the lady of the house, sir?”
“Er—yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”
The man laughed. Somehow, he was inside the hall.
Half an hour later, Leonidas closed the door, and surveyed, with something akin to bewilderment, the mound of brushes on the floor. If the refrigerator man had been like that brush man, he thought, his kitchen would resemble a glacier.
He picked up the brushes and thrust them into a hitherto undiscovered hall closet.
The back-door chimes rang.
This time, Leonidas looked out the window before opening the door.
It was that man again!
He opened the door a crack.
“Do you,” he said, “know Mr. Peters?”
“Huh?”
“Mr. Peters, of the Prowl Car Fifteen Peterses? Because if you stay there a few minutes longer, you will have an excellent opportunity of meeting Mr. Peters. I have summoned him.”
He strode back into the kitchen and picked up the red phone.
Simultaneously, the Campbells started coming from the front door.
Perhaps this was the sort of thing Cassie referred to when she said that what with people and door bells, she never had a minute to herself.
There was a coupe parked out front. This had to be Cassie and Dow!
But it was a large, well-girthed woman, staggering under the weight of a laden market basket whose handle flaunted a vivid purple bow.
Behind her, similarly burdened, was a woman Leonidas knew, and one of the few people in the world whom he actively disliked. He endured Estelle Otis only because she happened to be the wife of his friend and former colleague, Charles Otis, who still taught at Meredith’s. Estelle was the only person Leonidas had ever met who never betrayed the slightest glimmer of a sense of humor.
Both women brushed by him and deposited their baskets on the floor.
“Ah, Leonidas,” Estelle said. “This is Judge Round. Judge Harriet Pomeroy Round. You have heard of her. Hattie, she got the green drapes, after all!”
“Not really!”
“I wonder about the spreads. I said pink. I told her pink. Nothing but pink would do.”
Without further ado, Estelle and Judge Round proceeded up the circular staircase.
Leonidas watched them with mounting irritation. Then he shrugged and sat down on the bottom step. There wasn’t anything he could do about them. You couldn’t actively boot from your house a lady judge, or the wife of one of your oldest friends. But at least he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a personally conducted tour.
They finally came down, rather heatedly discussing whether a nice yellow wouldn’t have
