id and tipped them and thankfully saw the
hall-door close on their backs. He was tired, over-heated and glad to be
alone.

Shaking off his coat, he made a round of his rooms, opening windows.
Those in the front of the apartment looked out from the second-story
elevation upon East Thirtieth Street, between Fourth and Lexington
Avenues. Those in the rear (he discovered to his consummate disgust)
commanded an excellent view of a very deep hole in the ground swarming
with Italian labourers and dotted with steam drills, mounds of broken
rock and carters with their teams; also a section of East Twenty-ninth
Street was visible through the space that had been occupied no longer
ago than last spring by a dignified row of brownstone houses with
well-tended backyards.

Staff cursed soulfully the noise and dirt caused by the work of
excavation, shut the back windows to keep out the dust and returned to
the front room--his study, library and reception-room in one. With the
addition of the bath off the bedroom in the rear, and a large
hall-closet opening from the study, these two rooms comprised his home.
The hall was public, giving access to two upper floors which, like that
beneath him, were given up to bachelor apartments. The house was in
reality an old-fashioned residence, remodelled and let out by the floor
to young men mainly of Staff's ilk: there was an artist on the upper
story, a writer of ephemeral fiction on the third, an architect on the
first. The janitor infested the basement, chiefly when bored by the
monotony of holding up an imitation mahogany bar over on Third Avenue.
His wife cooked abominably and served the results under the name of
breakfast to the tenants, who foraged where they would for their other
meals. Otherwise she was chiefly distinguished by a mad, exasperating
passion for keeping the rooms immaculately clean and in order. Staff
noted approvingly that, although Mrs. Shultz had not been warned of his
return, there was no trace of dust in the rooms, not a single stick of
furniture nor a book out of place.

There wasn't really any reason why he should stick in such un-modern and
inconveniently situated lodgings--that is, aside from his ingrained
inclination to make as little trouble for himself as possible. To hunt
a new place to live would be quite as much of a nuisance as to move to
it, when found. And he was comfortable enough where he was. He had taken
the place some eight years previously, at a tim