Alpha Book

Then, without a sound, he reclosed the door and withdrew to
his apartment.
As he emerged from the bedroom in his dressing-gown he heard the front
door-bell below peal twice, but paid no heed, his attention being
concentrated on the chair which Nina had sent him. First he walked
gingerly all around it, then he ventured nearer to examine it in detail,
and presently he tried it.
"Of course," he sighed--"bless her heart!--it's a perfectly impossible
chair. It squeaks, too." But he was mistaken; the creak came from the
old stairway outside his door, weighted with the tread of Mrs. Greeve.
The tread and the creaking ceased; there came a knock, then heavy
descending footsteps on the aged stairway, every separate step
protesting until the incubus had sunk once more into the depths from
which it had emerged.
As this happened to be the night for his laundry, he merely called out,
"All right!" and remained incurious, seated in the new chair and
striving to adjust its stiff and narrow architecture to his own broad
shoulders.


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