Albert Payson Terhune

“ So Daisy, by way of amusement, began to “listen in.”
“Listening in” is a plug-shifting process whereby the telephone-operator may hear any conversation over the wire. In some States, I understand, it is a misdemeanor. But perhaps there is no living operator who has not done it. In some private exchanges it is so common a custom that the cry of “Fish!” warns every other operator in the room that a particularly listenable talk is going on. This same cry of “Fish” is an invitation for all present to listen in. ”

“ This woman whose scalp was haloed by a crescent of kid-curlers that held in hard lumps her brass-hued front hair! This woman with the hard, light eyes and sagging mouth-lines and beaklike nose—this woman whose face was sallow and coarse, because it had not yet received its daily dress of make-up! This—this was Madeline!
“What can I do for you?” the woman was saying for the second time, her early air of curiosity merging into one of dawning hostility.
“I am the switchboard operator downstairs,” said Daisy faintly. ”

“ Daisy was just the Girl in the Crowd. Look down the aisle of your subway—or surface—or L-car on the way home to-night, and you will see her. You will see her by the dozen.
But you will not observe her, unless you look hard. She is not the type of girl to make you murmur fatuously: “Gee, but I wish she was my stenographer!” Nor is she the sort that excites pity for her plainness. She is—yes, my term “the Girl in the Crowd” best fits her. ”

“ When the high cost of living first menaced our suffering land, scores of such apartment-houses sprang into life, in order that New Yorkers might do their bit toward the upkeep of high prices. Here, at a rental ranging from fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars a year, one may live in quarters almost as commodious as those for which a suburbanite or smaller city’s dweller pays fifty dollars a month. ”

“ Jump! There isn’t much time to waste. Hubby’s sure to be hotfooting it home. And when hubby comes, deny everything. Deny! And keep on denying. He wont have any proof, remember that. He’ll have no proof. Pay for the lie by being a whole lot decenter to him, forever-after-amen.”
Moving away from the dumfounded woman, Daisy bolted out of the flat and was lucky enough to catch a down-going elevator. She reached the ground floor just as the building’s perplexed superintendent came to the shaft on his way to answer Madeline’s urgent summons.
Into the superintendent’s deserted office sped Daisy. ”

“ There are worse things than a husband who loves you—even if he can’t give you all the money you want to spend. Phil would never have run away like that, from anything—not that the lesson is likely to do me any good, now.”
“Here!” exclaimed the girl, shaking the dazed Madeline roughly by the shoulder. “I’m going to get you out of this. I don’t know why, but I am. Maybe I’ve a bill of my own to pay, as well as you have. We’ve all done some learning to-day, I guess. And learning isn’t on the free-list.”
“But—”
“Go to the phone right away,” commanded Daisy, “and call up the super. ”

“ The woman still stood in the middle of the living-room. Her hard, light eyes were dark and dilated. Her sallow face was haggard and ghastly. Yet her features were unmoved. There was about her bearing and expression a certain hopeless courage that lent dignity to the squat figure.
DAISY hesitated—then turned back into the room. The woman stared dully past her toward the doorway through which Karl had vanished. She acknowledged the girl’s presence by muttering, in a curiously dead voice, more to herself than to Daisy:
“Men are queer animals, aren’t they? ”

“ This caller was a fussy woman in Apartment 12, who first wanted to know the correct time and then asked for a wire to Philadelphia. A full minute elapsed before Daisy could get back to the lovers. And as she turned again to their talk, she realized with a guilty start that in the mix-up of the various plugs she had left the switch open.
Have you ever called up a telephone-number and been let in on a conversation already going on between the person you called up and somebody else? ”

“ At the door she almost collided with the returning superintendent. Vexed at having been called upstairs in such haste on an utterly trivial errand, he very naturally wreaked his ill-temper on the first subordinate he chanced to meet—which was Daisy.
“What are you doing away from your switchboard?” he snarled. “I wont stand for any loafing. Get that into your mind, once and for all. ”

“ Yet her preconceived vision of Karl—of young, athletic, hero-featured Karl—died hard and in much and sudden pain. Poor Daisy! Until he spoke, she had mistaken him for the husband.
“If he knew my voice,” babbled the man, “we’re up against it. I’d better get out of town for a while, I suppose. Maybe he—”
“Don’t worry!” interposed Madeline acidly. “You wont have to run away from town and leave me to face it all. This girl has gotten us out of it. She is the operator downstairs. Phil called up and asked her all sorts of questions. And she told him the apartment hadn’t had a call all morning. ”

“ Men who grumbled right piteously at the advance of bread from five to six cents a loaf eagerly paid three thousand dollars a year for the privilege of living in the garish-fronted abodes, and they sneered at humbler friends who, for the same sum, rented thirty-room mansions in the suburbs. ”

“ Then came the day of jarring disillusionment, a day which Daisy followed by sobbing until midnight on her none-too-soft boarding-house bed, three blocks to westward.
PROMPTLY at nine that morning, as usual, Karl called up Apartment 60.
“Sweetheart,” he joyfully hailed Madeline, “I’ve just bought the new car. It’s a beauty. And you’re going to be the very first person to ride in it—to consecrate it.”
“That’s darling of you!” replied Madeline in evident delight. “I’d rather ride in a wheelbarrow with you than in a Rolls-Royce with—with—”
“With Phil?” asked Karl almost savagely. ”

“ It gives one an absurdly guilty feeling. And it means the switch has carelessly been left open, so that anybody calling up can tap the wire. That is the condition in which Daisy had chanced to leave the switch to Apartment 60. Eagerly she stretched forth her hand to repair the error. As she did so, three sentences struck her ear. They were spoken in quick succession by three people—as follows:
“Good-by, darling,” said Karl. “I’ll be there at one.”
“Good-by, boy dear,” answered Madeline. “I'll call you up again before then.”
“Who in hell are you?” bellowed a third and huskier voice. ”

“ In her nervous haste to make the new connection and get back to her listening, she awkwardly knocked out a plug or two. Absent-mindedly she readjusted them, trying meantime to catch what the second caller was trying to say to her. ”