"Not quite," says I. "But we lived in the same apartment buildin' a couple of years back. Third floor west, wasn't you?"

"That's it," says he. "And I believe I heard you'd just been married."

"Yes, we did have a chatty janitor," says I. "You were there with your mother, from somewhere out on the Coast. We almost got to the noddin' point when we met in the elevator, didn't we?"

"If we did," says he, "that was the nearest I came to getting acquainted with anyone in New York. It's the lonesomest hole I was ever in. Say——"

And inside of three minutes he's told me all about it; how he'd brought Mother on from Seattle to have a heart specialist give her a three months' treatment that hadn't been any use, and how he'd come East alone this time to tie up a big spruce lumber contract with the airplane department. Also he reminds me that he is Crosby Rhodes and writes the name of the hotel where he's stopping on his card. It's almost like a reunion with an old college chum.

"But how do you happen to be sizin' up a show window like this?" says I, indicatin' the Maison Noir's display of classy gowns. "Got somebody back home that you might take a few samples to?"

His big, square-cut face sort of pinks up and his mild blue eyes take on kind of a guilty75 look as he glances over his shoulder at the window. "Not a soul," says he. "The fact is, I'm not much of a ladies' man. Been in the woods too much, I suppose. All the same, though, I've always thought that if ever I ran across just the right girl——" Here he scrapes his foot and works up that fussed expression again.

75

"I see," says I, grinnin'. "You have the plans and specifications all framed up and think you'd know her on sight, eh?"

Crosby nods and smiles sheepish. "It's gone further than that," says he. "I—I've seen her."

"Well, well!" says I. "Where?"

He looks around cautious and then whispers confidential. "In that show window."

"Eh" says I, gawpin'. "Oh! You mean you got the idea from one of the dummies? Well, that's playin' it safe even if it is a little unique."

Crosby seems to hesitate a minute, as if debatin' whether to let it ride at that or not, and then he goes on:

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