He went down the stairs, loose-jointed, pallid, and bare-headed. He went through the downstairs dining-room to the street and out to the curb, where he vomited. When he had vomited, he went to a taxicab that stood a dozen feet away, climbed into it, and gave the driver an address in Greenwich Village.
3
Ned Beaumont left the taxicab in front of a house whose open basement-door, under brown stone steps, let noise and light out into a dark street. He went through the basement-doorway into a narrow room where two white-coated bar-tenders served a dozen men and women at a twenty-foot bar and two waiters moved among tables at which other people sat.
The balder bar-tender said, “For Christ’s sake, Ned!” put down the pink mixture he was shaking in a tall glass, and stuck a wet hand out across the bar.
Ned Beaumont said, “‘Lo, Mack,” and shook the wet hand.
One of the waiters came up to shake Ned Beaumont’s hand and then a round and florid Italian whom Ned Beaumont called Tony. When these greetings were over Ned Beaumont said he would buy a drink.
“Like hell you will,” Tony said. He turned to the bar and rapped on it with an empty cocktail-glass. “This guy can’t buy so much as a glass of water tonight,” he said when he had the bar-tenders’ attention. “What he wants is on the house.”
Ned Beaumont said: “That’s all right for me, so I get it. Double Scotch.”
Two girls at a table in the other end of the room stood up and called together: “Yoo-hoo, Ned!”
He told Tony, “Be back in a minute,” and went to the girls’ table. They embraced him, asked him questions, introduced him to the men with them, and made a place for him at their table.
He sat down and replied to their questions that he was back in New York only for a short visit and not to stay and that his was double Scotch.
At a little before three o’clock they rose from their table, left Tony’s establishment, and went to another almost exactly like it three blocks away, where they sat at a table that could hardly have been told from the first and drank the same sort of liquor they had been drinking.
One of the men went away at half past three. He did not say good-by to the others, nor they to him. Ten minutes later Ned Beaumont, the other man, and the two girls left. They got into a taxicab at the corner and went to a hotel near Washington Square, where the other man and one of the girls got out.
The remaining girl took Ned Beaumont, who called her Fedink, to an apartment in Seventy-third Street. The apartment was very warm. When she opened the door warm air came out to meet them. When she was three steps inside the living-room she sighed and fell down on the floor.
Ned Beaumont shut the door and tried to awaken her, but she would not wake. He carried and dragged her difficultly into the next room and put her on a chintz-covered day-bed. He took off part of her clothing, found some blankets to spread over her, and opened a window. Then he went into the bathroom and was sick. After that he returned to the living-room, lay down on the sofa in all his clothes, and went to sleep.
4
A telephone-bell, ringing close to Ned Beaumont’s head, awakened him. He opened his eyes, put his feet down on the floor, turned on his side, and looked around the room. When he saw the telephone he shut his eyes and relaxed.
The bell continued to ring. He groaned, opened his eyes again, and squirmed until he had freed his left arm from beneath his body. He put his wrist close to his eves and looked at his watch, squinting. The watch’s crystal was gone and its hands had stopped at twelve minutes to twelve.
Ned Beaumont squirmed again on the sofa until he was leaning on his left elbow, holding his head up on his left hand. The telephone-bell was still ringing. He looked around the room with miserably dull eyes. The lights were burning. Through an open doorway he could see Fedink’s blanket-covered feet on an end of the day-bed.