During the days that followed, she listened in again, with all her old-time hero-and-heroine-worship. Now she understood the strain of melancholy in these two people’s love. It was the hopelessness of that love which made them so sad, in the midst of their stolen happiness.
Once, in a free moment, Daisy slipped from her cubby-hole and into the superintendent’s office, to ask for a stronger light-bulb. There on the wall hung a typed list of the house’s tenants. Stealing a glance at it while the superintendent’s back was turned, Daisy ran her eye down the list until she came to the number she wanted:
Apartment 60—Mr. and Mrs. Philip Caleb Vanbrugh.
Caleb! Yes, that was the sort of middle name her ugly-tempered clod of a husband would have been likely to own. The names Madeline and Caleb could no more blend than could violets and prunes. Doubly, now, Daisy’s heart was with the lovers.
One qualm, only, marred her sympathy. From the fact that Karl always spoke of Vanbrugh by his first name, the men apparently were friends. And to woo one’s friend’s wife is black vileness. Even Daisy knew that. So she readjusted matters in her elastic mind, and decided the men were merely close business acquaintances, and that friendship did not enter into their relations. Daisy felt better about it, after that—much better.
One morning when Daisy connected the wire for the lovers and prepared for her daily feast of listening in, a sharp whir from another apartment in the house drew her back to earth. In her nervous haste to make the new connection and get back to her listening, she awkwardly knocked out a plug or two. Absent-mindedly she readjusted them, trying meantime to catch what the second caller was trying to say to her.
This caller was a fussy woman in Apartment 12, who first wanted to know the correct time and then asked for a wire to Philadelphia. A full minute elapsed before Daisy could get back to the lovers. And as she turned again to their talk, she realized with a guilty start that in the mix-up of the various plugs she had left the switch open.
Have you ever called up a telephone number and been let in on a conversation already going on between the person you called up and somebody else? It gives one an absurdly guilty feeling. And it means the switch has carelessly been left open, so that anybody calling up can tap the wire. That is the condition in which Daisy had chanced to leave the switch to Apartment 60. Eagerly she stretched forth her hand to repair the error. As she did so, three sentences struck her ear. They were spoken in quick succession by three people—as follows:
“Good-by, darling,� said Karl. “I’ll be there at one.�
“Good-by, boy dear,� answered Madeline. “I’ll call you up again before then.�