Chapter VII

Douglas Raymond, who was habitually a late riser, came down to the breakfast table of the early birds one morning, and there were polite expressions of astonishment at seeing him.

“Say, you look as though you’d slept in a chair, with all your clothes on!” exclaimed Ralph Atwood. “I don’t mean to be personal, of course, but you have that fresh and breezy appearance.”

“I sat in a chair all night, but I didn’t sleep,” Douglas said with a dull and glassy stare at the other man.

“My boy, what a spell of conscience!” cried Ralph. “I get that way, but never for all night. I can foot up all the columns of my evil deeds and strike a trial balance in about half an hour; and I always sleep better for it, at that.”

Douglas was not moved to mirth.

“I was working,” he explained soberly. “I’m going to ask Miss Bascom if she’s got some back room or a corner in the basement where I can run a typewriter without keeping all the people awake.”

“Ha, ha! You’re off on another tack, eh?”

“No, not exactly. I’m a slow writer, and I’m just trying to make up all the continuity for the programs at the studio.”

“Continuity! That’s movie stuff, not radio!” declared Ralph, who was informed on all subjects.

“It’s radio now,” said Douglas. “From the time the announcer says ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ right to the end of the program, he reads all his stuff off a script. And some of ’em have a new script for every program.

“Our studio doesn’t have a continuity writer, like the big ones, so I’m trying to work it up myself. But—gosh! It begins to look as though I’d have to find some way of cutting out rest and sleep altogether.”

A fresh surprise was afforded the boarders when Dora came tripping into the room, but she was bright and well rested.

“What’s hit the house?” inquired Ralph. “Everybody getting wide awake and ambitious!”

“I’m getting to be a busy little person,” said Dora winsomely. “I have a lot of writing to do now. Letters! I think every letter that is written to an artist, or any one in public life, should be answered carefully and conscientiously.”

“Mash notes?” suggested Ralph.

“Indeed, no! No mash notes, Mr. Atwood. Applause! Very honest and sincere applause. Ever since the first night I tried announcing at the studio, the letters have been coming by the basketful. A—a couple of hundred people, I guess, have written to ask who the little Southern lady was. Isn’t it rich?”

Douglas looked at her appealingly, moving restlessly in his chair.

“I’m getting poor Douglas positively worried,” she went on. “Quite a lot of people have written in that they’d much prefer a woman for an announcer all the time. Lots of them wanted an autographed photograph, and some suggested that my picture should be sent to the Sunday papers so they would know how I looked.”

“What fine weather we aren’t having, isn’t it?” said Ottilie Eldom to Etta Upham.

Horace Sheldon, the cigar store owner, stared at Dora with his frank appreciation of good looks.

“Hollywood’ll get you if you don’t watch out, Miss Perkins,” he said. “Better not start broadcasting any pictures of yourself, m’ dear. Ziegfeld’s scouts are on the lookout for the good ones all the time, and we—we need you here!”

“Oh, Mr. Sheldon!” Dora cried, and her face became suffused with sunrise blushes.

Douglas coughed violently as he came downstairs to start for the studio one evening, and halted, leaning on the newel post till he recovered from the paroxysm.

“Great Scott, man! You ought not to go out,” protested Dr. Hillary, stepping out into the hall. “You’ve had this cold a week or more, I’ve noticed.”

He touched the young man’s forehead.

“Ha! I thought so; you’re burning up with fever. I advise you to phone your studio that you can’t come. Go to bed and send for a doctor at once.”

Douglas laughed deprecatingly.

“I’m all right,” he insisted. “Too much midnight-oil stuff. I’ve got to lay off working all night and not sleeping in the daytime, I guess. I went to a doctor and he said that I was trying to do too much and I’d have to quit. But sometimes you can’t quit when things have got to be done.”

He looked anxiously up the stairs, and when Dora came tripping lightly and airily from her room presently, he betrayed a slight impatience.

“We’re going to be late, Dora,” he said.

“Then why wait for me?” she demanded sharply. “Nobody asked you to! Too bad you couldn’t phone for a taxi.”

Dr. Hillary turned away with a shrug, and returned to the parlor.

“Those two might as well be married!” chuckled Henry Caddock. “They’ve started in on the married-life stuff a little prematurely, haven’t they?”

“There’s a certain type of woman,” mused Hillary, “that seems to hold a certain type of man by a system of judicious bullying. I believe they relieve the strain at the danger point by reverting to excessive tenderness to establish the balance. I suppose Miss Perkins is—er—temperamental, as it’s called.”

“What that certain type of woman needs, professor,” spoke up Ralph Atwood, “is a first-class, strong-arm wife beater. Say! I’d like the job of being married to that cutie for a day or two; she wouldn’t have any trouble getting a divorce, and I’d stand for six months in the workhouse—if it wasn’t in Delaware.”

“Raymond’s in really bad shape,” said Hillary. “He might slip into pneumonia in a moment with that cold and his run-down condition. He has just about exhausted his vitality. Quite often a big, robust chap like that goes all to pieces suddenly; he’s likely to collapse while he’s fighting to keep on his feet.”

Some of the boarders were out, but the remaining ones sat about the parlor and listened with obvious anxiety for the broadcasting of the local station.

Douglas was at the microphone when WXL came on the air, and his voice seemed to lack nothing of its usual strength, though there was a perceptible huskiness, and he coughed sharply from time to time.

“The Homeland Singers—your favorite mixed quartet—will entertain you for an hour,” he announced after the usual forms had been disposed of. “This evening these admirable artists will build their program upon the theme of home and family.

“That comes pretty near the heart, friends, and it’s not easily associated with anything commercial; yet I’m going to take a chance on mentioning that the hour is provided for you through the gracious courtesy of the Homeland Architects and Builders, Incorporated.

“That’s about all I need to say. If you want to find out more about such generous friends of the radio audience, the Homeland Architects and Builders will be happy to send you some interesting and informative literature.

“And I would like to add that some commercial and industrial houses of today are not in business solely for purpose of piling up dividends for their stockholders. These friends of ours actually make it possible for young and impecunious people to start life with a real home of the sort that they ought to have. One of their slogans is this: ‘You find the right girl—we’ll find the right home for her.’

“Now the Homeland quartet will sing some very appropriate songs on the theme they have chosen. And you’ll notice that their taste does not run to the sort of thing that’s nothing but sugar and sentimentality. They’re going to sing a special arrangement of one of Mrs. Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’—love! Tenderness!”

He was interrupted by an attack of coughing.

“The tenderness,” he went on hoarsely, “that is not expressed in mere words or gestures, but that deeper, purer understanding that is the real radio of the realm of the spirit.”

“Heck! He’ll have me sniveling in a minute!” muttered Ottilie Eldom. “An old maid has feelings.”

“Please give the Homeland Singers your undivided attention, friends,” the announcer implored. “The message is a rare and precious one—as rare and precious as the spirit of the theme. Life needs so much of that spirit to—to make it endurable—that—”

“Poor fellow’s coughing again,” said Hillary.

“I—I present the Homeland Singers!” finished the announcer somewhat abruptly.

“I’m blamed if I know whether he was coughing or not!” exclaimed Ralph Atwood with uncommon gravity. “Seemed like he was all worked up with his own line of hokum—almost ready to have a good old cry.

“Hello!” he challenged. “What’s the matter with Kitty?”

There was no response. Kitty Granby had risen and walked rapidly to the bay window, and as she stood with her back to the company there was a suspicious little movement of her shoulders that indicated some difficulty in breathing.

“Shut up! You poor fool!” whispered Henry Caddock, giving Ralph an ugly look.

“I must say that Raymond is acquiring a style!” exclaimed the professor. “He has the faculty for absolute detachment—sinking himself in his part like an actor. That might be a mature man of considerable experience in the world, instead of the rather diffident chap we meet at the dinner table.”

“Might it not be, doctor,” murmured Miss Stark, “that the _real_ man is speaking into the microphone? It’s so difficult for us all to penetrate the masks that our friends and associates wear in public!”

“Why, that’s an interesting postulate, I grant you,” answered the professor.