"Never mind explainin'--gimme a look!" The suspicious tenseness in her voice increased. "I tell you this--ayther you come down here right this secont or I shut the window and you can be off or you can go to the divil or go anywheres you please for all of me, because I'm an overworked woman and I need my rest and I've no more time to waste on you."
"Wait, please; I'm coming immediately," called out Mr. Leary.
He forced his legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell across the areaway.
"You mustn't judge by first appearances," he was explaining with a false and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone of illumination. "I'm not what I seem, exactly. You see, I----"
"Mushiful Evans!" The exclamation was half shrieked, half gasped out; and on the words the window was slammed to, the light within flipped out, and through the glass from within came a vehement warning.
"Get away, you--you lunatic! Get away from here now or I'll have the cops on you."
"But please, please listen," he entreated, with his face close against the bars. "I assure you, madam, that I can explain everything if you will only listen."
There was no mercy, no suggestion of relenting in the threatening message that came back to him.
"If you ain't gone from here in ten seconts I'll ring for the night watchman on the block, and I'll blow a whistle for the police. I've got me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the whole block?"
"Pray be calm, madam, I'll go. In fact, I'm going now."
He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.
Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the shards and potsherds of his reawakened anticipations, now all so rudely shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower in these cold and drafty purlieus until----
Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before him. Who were those married friends of Slack's, who lived on the third floor--friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was it--Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed. Then he would play a solo on the Braydons' bell until he roused them. They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too glad to give him shelter from the elements until Bob Slack returned from his session at bridge. He was saved!