Dove gazed down thoughtfully at the coal office on the pier below us, where a wagon was loading.
"On a mellow afternoon like this," he said, "coal doesn't seem quite so pressing a concern; but I tell you, in a bleak boarding-house about Thanksgiving time, with no heat of any sort available but a gas-jet, it is a different matter. We were an angry and puzzled lot that night. Mrs. Vesey protested so pitifully that there had been coal in the bins only the day before, and asserted so repeatedly that she had heard the noise of the new load going in, that we could not help believe her. She promised to call up her coal man the first thing the next morning, and we also agreed to go round and visit him in a body, to add our personal appeals; but how on earth several tons of coal could have been stolen out of the cellar without any one hearing it seemed to us a mystery.
"The next morning we visited the coal-dealer _en masse_--in a coalition, as Blackmore said--and by spirited imprecation and paying cash we extracted a promise to have a couple of tons sent at once. His office was some distance up on Columbus Avenue, and on our way back we passed through one of the cross-streets--Eighty-Third, I think it was, because one of us wanted to get some stamps at the post-office. As we came along, we heard the rumble of coal passing down a chute, and saw a coal-wagon in the distance.
"'But what an odd-looking coal-wagon,' said another, as we approached.
"It was a large motor-truck with a hinged metal top, something like a huge street-cleaning cart. The engine was throbbing, and the coal was roaring noisily in the chute, which led down into the cellar window of a brownstone dwelling. The chute, instead of being the customary shallow trough, was a large circular pipe, so that we could not actually see the coal pouring downward, but only hear it crashing through the metal tube. That struck me as a good idea for preventing the coal-dust from spreading over everything near.
"But we were all interested not only in the odd appearance of the truck, but in the extraordinary din it caused. Delivering coal is never a silent job, naturally; but this racket was really terrific. The driver seemed to have left his engine running full tilt, and the whole truck quivered and shook with the power. We stood amazed at the furious rattle and uproar. The noise was too great for spoken words to be caught, but I pointed out the circular chute to Blackmore. It was made in telescoping sections, to slide into itself, and was an interesting novelty.