In the Knockerbeck Hotel there are various parlors; Pompeian rooms lined in marble and pillared in chaste fluted columns; Louis Quinze corners, gold-leafed and pink-brocaded, principally furnished with a spindly-legged Vernis-Martin cabinet and a large French clock in the form of a celestial sphere surmounted by a gold cupid.
There are high-ceilinged rendezvous rooms, with six arm and two straight chairs chased after the manner of Gouthiere, and a series of small inlaid writing-desks, generously equipped for an avidious public to whom the crest-embossed stationery of a four-dollar-a-day-up hotel suggests long-forgotten friends back home.
Just off the lobby is the Oriental room, thick with arabesque hangings and incense and distinguished by the famous pair of Chinese famille rose mandarin jars, fifty-three inches high and enameled with Hoho birds and flowers. In careful contrast the adjoining room, a Colonial parlor paneled in black walnut and designed by a notorious architect, is ten degrees lower in temperature and lighted by large rectangular windows, through whose leaded panes a checkered patch of sunshine filters across the floor for half an hour each forenoon.
Then there is the manicure parlor, done in white tile, and stationary wash-stands by the Herman Casky Hygienic Company, Eighth Avenue.
The oracle of this particular Delphi was Miss Gertrude Sprunt, white-shirtwaisted, smooth-haired, and cool-fingered. Miss Sprunt could tell, almost as soon as you stepped out of the elevator opposite the parlors, the shortest cut to your hand and heart; she could glance at a pair of cuffs and give the finger-nails a correspondingly high or domestic finish, and could cater to the manicurial whims of Fifth Avenue and Four Corners alike. After one digital treat at her clever hands you enlisted as one of Miss Sprunt's regulars.
This fact was not lost upon her sister worker, Miss Ethyl Mooney. "Say, Gertie"--Miss Mooney tied a perky little apron about her trim waist and patted a bow into place--"is there ever a mornin' that you ain't booked clear through the day?"
Miss Sprunt hung her flat sailor hat and blue jacket behind the door, placed her hands on her hips, glanced down the length of her svelte figure, yawned, and patted her mouth with her hand.
"Not so you could notice it," she replied, in gapey tones. "I'm booked from nine to quitting just six days of the week; and, believe me, it's not like taking the rest cure."
"I guess if I was a jollier like you, Gert, I'd have a waitin'-list, too, I wish I could get on to your system."
"Maybe I give tradin'-stamps," observed Miss Sprunt, flippantly.
"You give 'em some sort of laughing-gas; but me, I'm of a retiring disposition, and I never could force myself on nobody."
Miss Gertrude flecked at herself with a whisk-broom.
"Don't feel bad about it, Ethyl; just keep on trying."
Miss Ethyl flushed angrily.
"Smarty!" she said.
"I wasn't trying to be nasty, Ethyl--you're welcome to an appointment every twenty minutes so far as I'm concerned."
Miss Ethyl appeared appeased.
"You know yourself, Gert, you gotta way about you. A dollar tip ain't nothin' for you. But look at me--I've forgot there's anything bigger'n a quarter in circulation."
"There's a great deal in knowing human nature. Why, I can almost tell a fellow's first name by looking at his half-moons."
"Believe me, Gert, it ain't your glossy finish that makes the hit; it's a way you've got of making a fellow think he's the whole show."
"I do try to make myself agreeable," admitted Miss Sprunt.
"Agreeable! You can look at a guy with that Oh-I-could-just-listen-to-you-talk-for-ever expression, and by the time you're through with him he'll want to take his tens out of the water and sign over his insurance to you."
"Manicuring is a business like anything else," said Miss Sprunt, by no means displeased. "You sure do have to cater to the trade."
"Well, believe me--" began Miss Ethyl.
But Miss Gertrude suddenly straightened, smiled, and turned toward her table.
Across the hall Mr. James Barker, the rubbed-down, clean-shaven result of a Russian bath, a Swedish massage, and a bountiful American breakfast, stepped out of a French-gold elevator and entered the parlor.
Miss Sprunt placed the backs of her hands on her hips and cocked her head at the clock.
"Good morning, Mr. Barker; you're on time to the minute."
Mr. Barker removed his black-and-white checked cap, deposited three morning editions of evening papers atop a small glass case devoted to the display of Madame Dupont's beautifying cold-creams and marvelous cocoa-butters, and rubbed his hands swiftly together as if generating a spark. A large diamond mounted in a cruelly stretched lion's mouth glinted on Mr. Barker's left hand; a sister stone glowed like an acetylene lamp from his scarf.
"On time, eh! Leave it to your Uncle Fuller to be on time for the big show--a pretty goil can drag me from the hay quicker'n anything I know of."
Miss Gertrude quirked the corner of one eye at Miss Ethyl in a scarcely perceptible wink and filled a glass bowl with warm water.
"That's one thing I will say for my regular customers--they never keep me waiting; that is the beauty of having a high-class trade."
She glanced at Mr. Barker with pleasing insinuation, and they seated themselves vis-a-vis at the little table.
Miss Sprunt surrounded herself with the implements of her craft--small porcelain jars of pink and white cold-creams, cakes of powder in varying degrees of pinkness, vials of opaque liquids, graduated series of files and scissors, large and small chamois-covered buffers, and last the round glass bowl of tepid water cloudy with melting soap.
Mr. Barker extended his large hand upon the little cushion and sighed in satisfaction.
"Go to it, sis--gimme a shine like a wind-shield."
She rested his four heavy fingers lightly in her palm.
"You really don't need a manicure, Mr. Barker; your hands keep the shine better than most."
"Well, I'll be hanged--tryin' to learn your Uncle Fuller when to have his own hands polished! Can you beat it?" Mr. Barker's steel-blue shaved face widened to a broad grin. "Say, you're a goil after my own heart--a regular little sixty-horse-power queen."
"I wasn't born yesterday, Mr. Barker."
"I know you wasn't, but you can't bluff me off, kiddo. You don't need to give me no high-power shine if you don't want to, but I've got one dollar and forty minutes' worth of your time cornered, just the samey."
Miss Sprunt dipped his hands into tepid water.
"I knew what I said would not frighten you off, Mr. Barker. I wouldn't have said it if I thought it would."
Mr. Barker guffawed with gusto.
"Can you beat the wimmin?" he cried. "Can you beat the wimmin?"
"You want a high pink finish, don't you, Mr. Barker?"
"Go as far as you like, sis; give 'em to me as pink and shiny as a baby's heel."
Miss Sprunt gouged out a finger-tip of pink cream and applied it lightly to the several members of his right hand. Her touch was sure and swift.
He regarded her with frankly admiring eyes.
"You're some little goil," he said; "you can tell me what I want better than I know myself."
"That's easy; there isn't a broker in New York who doesn't want a high pink finish, and I've been doing brokers, actors, millionaires, bank clerks, and Sixth Avenue swells in this hotel for three years."
He laughed delightedly, his eyes almost disappearing behind a fretwork of fine wrinkles.
"What makes you know I'm a tape-puller, kiddo? Durned if you ain't got my number better than I got it myself."
"I can tell a broker from a business man as easy as I can tell a five-carat diamond from a gilt-edge bond."
He slid farther down on his chair and regarded her with genuine approval.
"Say, kiddo, I've been all round the world--took a trip through Egypt in my car last spring that I could write a book about; but I ain't seen nothin' in the way of skirts that could touch you with a ten-foot rod."
She flushed.
"Oh, you fellows are such jolliers!"
"On the level, kiddo, you're preferred stock all right, and I'd be willin' to take a flyer any time."
"Say, Mr. Barker, you'd better quit stirring the candy, or it will turn to sugar."
"Lemme tell you, Miss Gertie, I ain't guyin', and I'll prove it to you. I'm goin' to take you out in the swellest little ninety-horse-power speedwagon you ever seen; if you'll gimme leave I'll set you and me up to-night to the niftiest little dinner-party on the island, eh?"
She filed rapidly at his thumb, bringing the nail to a pointed apex.
"I'm very careful about accepting invitations, Mr. Barker."
"Don't you think I can tell a genteel goil when I see her? That's why I ain't asked you out the first time I seen you."
She kept her eyes lowered.
"Of course, since you put it that way, I'll be pleased to accept your invitation, Mr. Barker."
He struck the table with his free hand.
"You're a live un, all right. How about callin' round fer you at six this evenin'?"
She nodded assent.
"Good goil! We'll keep the speedometer busy, all right!"
She skidded the palms of her hands over his nails. "There," she said, "that's not a bad shine."
He straightened his hands out before him and regarded them in mock scrutiny. "Those are some classy grabbers," he said; "and you're some classy little woiker."
He watched her replace the crystal stoppers in their several bottles and fit her various commodities into place. She ranged the scissors and files in neat graduated rows and blew powder particles off the cover with prettily pursed lips.
"That'll be about all, Mr. Barker."
He ambled reluctantly out from his chair.
"You'll be here at six, then?"
"Will I be here at six, sis? Say, will a fish swim?"
He fitted his cap carefully upon his head and pulled the vizor low over his eyes.
"So long, kiddo!" He crossed the marble corridor, stepped into the gold elevator, the filigree door snapped shut, and he shot upward.
Miss Ethyl waited a moment and then pitched her voice to a careful note of indifference.
"I'll bet the million-dollar kid asked you to elope with him."
Miss Gertrude tilted her coiffure forward and ran her amber back-comb through her front hair.
"No," she said, with the same indifference, "he didn't ask me to elope with him; he just wanted to know if I'd tour Hester Street with him in his canoe."
"I don't see no medals on you fer bein' the end man of the minstrel show. Don't let a boat trip to Coney go to your head; you might get brain-fever."
Gertrude Sprunt cast her eyes ceilingward.
"Well, one good thing, your brain will never cause you any trouble, Ethyl."
"Lord, Gert, cut out the airs! You ain't livin' in the rose suite on the tenth floor; you're only applyin' nail-polishes and cuticle-lotions down here in the basement."
"There's something else I'm doing, too," retorted Miss Gertrude, with unruffled amiability. "I'm minding my own affairs."
They fell to work again after these happy sallies, and it was late afternoon before there came a welcome lull.
"Who's your last, Gert?"
"Mr. Chase." There were two red spots of excitement burning on Miss Sprunt's cheeks, and her eyes showed more black than blue.
"Not that little guy with the Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep face? Take it from me, he's a bank clerk or a library guy. Thank Heaven, I ain't got no cheap skates on my staff!"
Miss Gertrude flushed up to her eyes.