Conscious that something had disturbed him, Wallie Macpherson raised himself on his elbow in bed to listen. For a full minute he heard nothing unusual: the Atlantic breaking against the sea-wall at the foot of the sloping lawn of The Colonial, the clock striking the hour in the tower of the Court House, and the ripping, tearing, slashing noises like those of a sash-and-blind factory, produced through the long, thin nose of old Mr. Penrose, two doors down the hotel corridor, all sounds to which he was too accustomed to be awakened by them.
While Wallie remained in this posture conjecturing, the door between the room next to him and that of Mr. Penrose was struck smartly several times, and with a vigour to denote that there was temper behind the blows which fell upon it. He had not known that the room was occupied; being considered undesirable on account of the audible slumbers of the old gentleman it was often vacant.
The raps finally awakened even Mr. Penrose, who demanded sharply: "What are you doing?"
"Hammering with the heel of my slipper," a feminine voice answered.
"What do you want?"
"A chance to sleep."
"Who's stopping you?" crabbedly.
"You're snoring." Indignation gave an edge to the accusation.
"You're impertinent!"
"You're a nuisance!" the voice retorted. Wallie covered his mouth with his hand and hunched his shoulders.
There was a moment's silence while Mr. Penrose seemed to be thinking of a suitable answer. Then: "It's my privilege to snore if I want to. This is my room--I pay for it!"
"Then this side of the door is mine and I can pound on it, for the same reason."
Mr. Penrose sneered in the darkness: "I suppose you're some sour old maid--you sound like it."
"And no doubt you're a Methuselah with dyspepsia!"
Wallie smote the pillow gleefully--old Mr. Penrose's collection of bottles and boxes and tablets for indigestion were a byword.
"We will see about this in the morning," said Mr. Penrose, significantly. "I have been coming to this hotel for twenty-eight years----"
"It's nothing to boast of," the voice interrupted. "I shouldn't, if I had so little originality."
Mr. Penrose, seeming to realize that the woman would have the last word if the dialogue lasted until morning, ended it with a loud snort of derision.
He was so wrought up by the controversy that he was unable to compose himself immediately, but lay awake for an hour framing a speech for Mr. Cone, the proprietor, which was in the nature of an ultimatum. Either the woman must move, or he would--but the latter he considered a remote possibility, since he realized fully that a multi-millionaire, socially well connected, is an asset which no hotel will dispense with lightly.