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Show HHiddenWays.; I.. TV .. By FREDERIC F. VAN DE YVATE.R X:ZXZSr"l - basement groan and start. The bell's trill came down toward us. Outside the horn kept up its blatting. Warren stirred and said: 'I fancy I'm in someone's way, ma'am." "I know you are," Miss Agatha returned. "II Timothy Higgins " Higgins threw open the door and found me with my finger on the beH. He wore Wilson's maroon and gold livery he was the only man on the house force it would fit and as he glared at me, he seemed to swell inside it His long upper lip twitched over the words he dared not utter under the old lady's sharp regard, but he did growl: "I'm not deaf." From the day he had hired me on Eddie Hoyt's recommendation for a cubby in his basement flat and thirty dollars a month, he had regretted re-gretted it. He had told me several times that I was "above my place" and now his look filled my stomach with qualms. I needed this humble "Agatha," the'girl cried and stared. CHAPTER I I heard the man killed In the Fer-riter Fer-riter apartment. I heard the words that brought about his murder, too, but just then the wheel came off Miss Agatha Paget's wheel chair and drove all else from my mind. The thick voice that I heard over the telephone and the dull sounds that followed seemed trite. They hid, rather than revealed, tragedy, and I forgot them. Later, they became be-came important They were small facta, about which men made monstrous mon-strous theories, as scientists rebuild dinosaurs from tiny bits of bone. Afterward, the call pad showed that it was three-thirty on the afternoon after-noon of February twenty-third when the switchboard clicked and whirred. I was alone in the foyer of the Mo-rello, Mo-rello, for Eddie Hoyt had slipped out for a bite and Wilson, the doorman, door-man, was ill. Higgins, the superintendent, super-intendent, who was filling in for him, had taken the elevator upstairs. The operator was slow and I scribbled scrib-bled the number on the call pad while 1 waited. A voice buzzed in my ear again, apparently speaking to someone fa the Ferriter flat, in a tongue I did not know. I thought it might be German, for it was blunt and guttural. Then I heard an odd sound, half grunt, half cough, and a faraway bump that must have been the lamp, or the body, falling. At the time, though, I thought it was Miss Paget's Pag-et's wheel chair. Warren, her chauffeur, was trundling trun-dling her in. He had had trouble at the door for there was no one there to help him. I looked up and saw a wheel rolling down the hajl. The chair had sagged. Miss Paget was hanging to its upper arm and laughing laugh-ing while Warren struggled to keep it from overturning. I ran to help Miss Paget. She was the oldest tenant by age and residence in the old Morello Apartments. This was one of the rare buildings in Manhattan that had endured into mellow age. The foyer was furnished in mahogany, tile and gloom, and on the ceiling dim cherubs were tangled in fading fad-ing ribbons. The Morello Apartments Apart-ments sat, brown and ornate, between be-tween bleaker, newer buildings with a calm weathered dignity nothing could break rather as Miss Agatha Paget sat between Warren and me' when at last we had righted her wrecked chair. I had been hallman at the Morello less than a week but already I knew that she was important. The pompous pomp-ous ass, Higgins, had squired the passages of her wheel chair between elevator and car as though they were royal progresses. Now the old lady sat and preened herself like a ruffled little hawk. She was oddly alive for one whose legs were useless. Time had worn but not blunted her. Years had sharpened her high-bridged nose and wrinkled her face but they had not loosened her mouth or quenched the zest in her blue eyes. She caught my eye and grinned, broad, warm and vital. "Thank you, David," she said. "You are David, aren't you? You all look alike in those uniforms. Warren, I know what that pious look of yours means. I remember quite well you've warned me that this chair was going to pieces. And I said it would outlive me, didn't I?" She cocked an eye at me, parrot-wise parrot-wise and as we half carried, half propelled her along the hall, I felt her looking at me again. Higgins and the elevator still were upstairs. I rang the bell. From the street came the sound of a protesting motor horn. I rang again. Miss Agatha clicked her teeth sharply and announced: "I've lived here forty years and there's never been a day that the service didn't get worse. Who's on the elevator?" "Higgins," I told her. She gave again the little audible bite. "His wife is away, isn't she?" The racket of the horn continued in the street. Miss Agatha said crisply: "Ring that bell, David, till I tell you to stop." Above the distant shrilling, I heard at last the old winch in the would run much more smoothly for everyone." She humbled him. "Yes'm," he said meekly. Miss Agatha's crippled body was angular and very light against me as I bore her into the car and lowered her to the black leather seat in its rear. The door slid shut on Higgins. Miss Agatha marked the parting glare he gave me. There was little that she actually missed. She said, more to herself than to me: "Mr. Toad, himself." I knew that Higgins would be waiting wait-ing below to tell me if he did not fire me outright how lowly was my lot. The livery I wore, the mocking memory of ambition I had brought to New York, made me reckless and I reached up from servitude toward equality with my passenger. " 'She cried,' " I quoted, who is that handsome man?" They answered: an-swered: "Mister ToadI" ' " Abashed by the silence behind me, I checked the car at the third floor and opened the door. I thought I heard a chuckle but when I turned about, Miss Agatha's face was grave and she took her latchkey from her purse. "If you'll open the door, David," she said and her words rebuffed my levity, "and then carry me into the workroom " I unlocked the door. As I again turned toward the elevator, I saw, across the shallow hall, the portal of the Ferriter apartment, white and reticent as an uncarved tombstone. I picked up Miss Agatha and bore her carefully into her apartment. The deep carpet of the hall hushed my footsteps and we appeared at the open door of a high-ceiled room so quietly that we alarmed the man and girl who stood by the desk in its center. Her face was lifted to his and I thought her hand had been on his arm, but they sprang apart before be-fore I could be sure. "Agatha," the girl cried and stared. I had watched her pass through the foyer with a swinging, boyish stride, but she actually saw me now for the first time, and I was aware how miserably my inherited in-herited uniform fitted. She was young and fair and she carried her lovely head with the alert vitality of a deer. "In person," Miss Paget replied dryly. "That chair by the table, if you please, David." The man had bent hastily over the desk. I disliked his plump sleekness, sleek-ness, the bald spot on his crown, his waxed mustache, the hysterical flutter of the papers he sorted and arranged. The girl looked from my burden to him and then grinned shamelessly. "Just what is this?" she demanded demand-ed as I set the old lady in the chair. "Understudying for Sappho, Agatha? Aga-tha? Darling, you aren't hurt, are you?" "I am not," Miss Agatha replied, and told of her chair's collapse. "That basement Don Juan," she concluded grimly. "I'll have a talk with him. And now will you And Annie and tell her to come here? I've had a rather trying afternoon." "Both of us, darling," the girl assured her and left the room. I turned to go. "One minute, David," Miss Agatha Aga-tha interposed. As I paused, the plump man at the desk lifted a pink face from his papers. His perpetually perpetu-ally arched eyebrows gave him the weakly haughty look of one about to sneeze. His voice was soft, and at the moment, nervous. "We're progressing. Miss Paget," he assured her uneasily, his hands still straying among the stacked papers pa-pers on the desk. "I'm going back to the genealogical society for an hour or so. Things are falling into shape. I've been hard at work." "So I noticed," the old lady told him. He looked at her uncertainly but her face was without expression. expres-sion. "Tomorrow then, at the same time, Mr. Ferriter," she said. He bowed jerkily and walked with some stiffness from the room. His ears were red. As he opened the hall door, I heard the elevator bell. "Excuse me," I began, but she held up her hand, as Allegra reentered. re-entered. (TO ISE CONTINUED) refuge from the storm of destitution destitu-tion that blew coldly through New York, and knowledge of my helplessness helpless-ness made me foolishly angry. Before Be-fore I could speak, Miss Agatha said: "Deaf! We began to think, Timothy, Timo-thy, that you were dead. Or else " Her sharp eyes prodded him and his uniformed bulk quailed. I saw that the aglet on his coat was loose and dangling. The noise of horns in the street grew louder. Miss Agatha Aga-tha said: "Warren, I think they want you to move that car. David and Timothy can get me upstairs quite nicely." The chauffeur went Miss Agatha continued to look at Higgins. I heard him breathe harder and saw sweat shining on his full red face. He said with stumbling eagerness: "Indeed I will, Miss Paget. The chair's broke! Dear, dear, ain't that too bad now? Maybe I can mend it for you, ma'am. I'll find time somehow. some-how. With Wilson sick and me taking his place on the day shift and a new man in the hall here, I'm fair drove. I am indeed, Miss Paget, Pag-et, with Wilson's and me own work to do. That's why " His voice died away under her severe regard and he buttoned his gilt aglet into place with uncertain fingers. I wondered at his ill ease, and madness made me say: "That's why he's doubling in brass." Caution cried out against the sorry sor-ry jest. Higgins squinted at me. His ire rather than my wit pleased Miss Agatha. There were mirth wrinkles about her eyes as she looked up and said: "Timothy will hold this wreck, David, Da-vid, if you'll lift me onto the elevator eleva-tor seat, please." "I'll manage, Miss Paget, don't you have a moment's worry, ma'am," Higgins babbled. "You," Miss Agatha corrected, "will take that chair down cellar and dispose of it If you were to spend more time in the basement or at the door, Timothy, and less on the fourth floor, I think matters |