“At last!” he cried.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘At last!’ Since you went away every minute has seemed an hour.”
“So it has to me.”
“Do you mean that?” breathed Hamilton Beamish fervently.
“Yes. That’s the way minutes do seem in East Gilead.”
“Oh, ah, yes,” said Mr. Beamish, a little damped. “When did you get back?”
“A quarter of an hour ago.”
Hamilton Beamish’s spirits soared once more.
“And you called me up at once!” he said emotionally.
“Yes. I wanted to know Mrs. Waddington’s telephone number at Hempstead.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“Of course not. I wanted to hear how you were. …”
“Did you? Did you?”
“… and if you had missed me.”
“Missed you!”
“Did you?”
“Did I!”
“How sweet of you. I should have thought you would have forgotten my very existence.”
“Guk!” said Hamilton Beamish, completely overcome.
“Well, shall I tell you something? I missed you, too.”
Hamilton Beamish drew another completely unscientific deep breath, and was about to pour his whole soul into the instrument in a manner that would probably have fused the wire, when a breezy masculine voice suddenly smote his eardrum.
“Is that Ed?” inquired the voice.
“No,” thundered Hamilton Beamish.
“This is Charley, Ed. Is it all right for Friday?”
“It is not!” boomed Hamilton Beamish. “Get off the wire, you blot! Go away, curse you!”
“Certainly, if you want me to,” said a sweet, feminine voice. “But. …”
“I beg your pardon! I am sorry, sorry, sorry. A fiend in human shape got on the wire,” explained Mr. Beamish hastily.
“Oh! Well, what were we saying?”
“I was just going to. …”
“I remember. Mrs. Waddington’s telephone number. I was looking through my mail just now, and I found an invitation from Miss Waddington to her wedding. I see it’s tomorrow. Fancy that!”
Hamilton Beamish would have preferred to speak of other things than trivialities like George Finch’s wedding, but he found it difficult to change the subject.
“Yes. It is to take place at Hempstead tomorrow. George is staying down there at the inn.”
“It’s going to be a quiet country wedding, then?”
“Yes. I think Mrs. Waddington wants to hush George up as much as possible.”
“Poor George!”
“I am going down by the one-thirty train. Couldn’t we travel together?”
“I am not sure that I shall be able to go. I have an awful lot of things to see to here, after being away so long. Shall we leave it open?”
“Very well,” said Hamilton Beamish resignedly. “But, in any case, can you dine with me tomorrow night?”
“I should love it.”
Hamilton Beamish’s eyes closed, and he snuffled for awhile.
“And what is Mrs. Waddington’s number?”
“Hempstead 4076.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll dine at the Purple Chicken, shall we?”
“Splendid.”
“You can always get it there, if they know you.”
“Do they know you?”
“Intimately.”
“Fine! Well, goodbye.”
Hamilton Beamish stood for a few moments in deep thought: then, turning away from the instrument, was astonished to perceive Officer Garroway.
“I’d forgotten all about you,” he said. “Let me see, what did you say you had come for?”
“To read you my poem, sir.”
“Ah, yes, of course.”
The policeman coughed modestly.
“It is just a little thing, Mr. Beamish—a sort of study, you might say, of the streets of New York as they appear to a policeman on his beat. I would like to read it to you, if you will permit me.”
Officer Garroway shifted his Adam’s apple up and down once or twice: and, closing his eyes, began to recite in the special voice which he as a rule reserved for giving evidence before magistrates.
“Streets!”
“That is the title, eh?”
“Yes, sir. And also the first line.”
Hamilton Beamish started.
“Is it vers libre?”
“Sir?”
“Doesn’t it rhyme?”
“No, sir. I understood you to say that rhymes were an outworn convention.”
“Did I really say that?”
“You did, indeed, sir. And a great convenience I found it. It seems to make poetry quite easy.”
Hamilton Beamish looked at him perplexedly. He supposed he must have spoken the words which the other had quoted, and yet that he should deliberately have wished to exclude a fellow-creature from the pure joy of rhyming “heart” with “Cupid’s dart” seemed to him in his present uplifted state inconceivable.
“Odd!” he said. “Very odd. However, go on.”
Officer Garroway went once more through the motions of swallowing something large and sharp, and shut his eyes again.
“Streets!
Grim, relentless, sordid streets!
Miles of poignant streets,
East, West, North,
And stretching starkly South;
Sad, hopeless, dismal, cheerless, chilling
Streets!”
Hamilton Beamish raised his eyebrows.
“I pace the mournful streets
With aching heart.”
“Why?” asked Hamilton Beamish.
“It is part of my duties, sir. Each patrolman is assigned a certain portion of the city as a beat.”
“I mean, why do you pace with aching heart?”
“Because it is bleeding, sir.”
“Bleeding? You mean your heart?”
“Yes, sir. My heart is bleeding. I look at all the sordid gloom and sorrow and my heart bleeds.”
“Well, go on. It all seems very peculiar to me, but go on.”
“I watch grey men slink past
With shifty, sidelong eyes
That gleam with murderous hate;
Lepers that prowl the streets.”
Hamilton Beamish seemed about to speak, but checked himself.
“Men who once were men,
Women that once were women,
Children like wizened apes,
And dogs that snarl and snap and growl and hate.
Streets!
Loathsome, festering streets!
I pace the scabrous streets
And long for death.”
Officer Garroway stopped, and opened his eyes: and Hamilton Beamish, crossing the room to where he stood, slapped him briskly on the shoulder.
“I see it all,” he said. “What’s wrong with you is liver. Tell me, have you any local pain and tenderness?”
“No, sir.”
“High temperature accompanied by shiverings and occasional rigours?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you have not a hepatic abscess. All that is the matter, I imagine, is a slight sluggishness in the oesophageal groove, which can be set right with calomel. My dear Garroway, it surely must be obvious to you that this poem of yours is all wrong. It is absurd for you to pretend that you do not see a number of pleasant and attractive people on your beat. The streets of New York are full of the most delightful persons. I have noticed them on all sides. The trouble is that you have been looking on them with a bilious eye.”
“But I thought you told me to be
