“It’s best to be careful,” agreed the Boarder.
“That’s what my Danny usta tell me b’fore he was shot,” she continued. “We was on a party line then⸺” She broke off abruptly, as if memory had flashed a message. “Say,” she resumed, “was you ever a party liner?”
“A what?” the Boarder asked.
“A party liner,” came the repetition. “You’re one when you and three or four other people all listens to what each other says on the phone, b’cause they’re on the same line and can. Anybody that would listen like that would peek through a keyhole—and I never met nobody that wouldn’t listen. After you’ve been a party liner for a while, you’ve got more of a rubberneck disposition than a’ astronomer. You watch a show from beginnin’ to end, through op’ry glasses, b’cause it makes you think you’re peekin’ at somethin’ on the sly. It’s a worse habit than whis’lin’ through your teeth; but there’s times when it comes in handy for some folks. The fine young one I had almost put Mr. Dan Sweeny and wife down and out.”
“I suppose the telephone company got after you?” the Boarder hazarded.
“You don’t get no coupon with that guess.” Mrs. Sweeny assured him. “Nothin’ like that happened; but somethin’ else did. Me and Danny seen our bank roll all made up and ready to go on in a disappearin’ act. It was a scary time for me, I tell you, mister.”
The boarder left off whittling the end of a pencil and began to make himself comfortable.
Mrs. Sweeny continued:
“About that time Danny had had a fallin’ out with a feller named ‘Mike the Wop’ that was workin’ at one of them race-track books. My husban’ wouldn’t stand for somethin’ he done, and told him so. They quarreled somethin’ outrag’ous; but afterward they made it up. Danny brought him out to dinner, and we treated him real stylish, like he was in the legislature and willin’ to be bought on the racin’ question. But that there Mike wasn’t no kind of a man. He had a low, backbitin’ disposition—he said he had Sicilian blood in him, and I believe it. Them Sicilians is great on that revenge thing, mister.”
The Boarder nodded.