“'What the deuce do you mean?' I said.
“'Just what I say. He's got some sort of a suction engine in that truck, a kind of big vacuum cleaner, and he's simply siphoning the coal out of somebody's cellar.'
“Larsen ran at us with a big spanner in his hand, but we grappled with him, and while three of us held him the others examined the truck. It was perfectly true. By an ingenious gasoline pump installed in the wagon he was drawing out the coal. Looking into the top of the wagon through a little glass peephole, we could see the black nuggets coming swiftly up out of the chute. By this time a little crowd had gathered, and the lady of the house ran out to see what was happening. I think she thought we were trying to seduce her coal supply. She explained angrily to us that Larsen had driven up to her door half an hour before and offered to sell her several tons of coal. Her cellar, like everyone else's, was none too well stocked, and she had been delighted to agree.
“While we were wondering just what to do, Larsen, who had been glaring wickedly at us, broke away from our grasp and reversed his machinery so that the coal began to thunder back honestly into the cellar. The puzzled woman, not suspecting anything wrong, went back indoors after we made some impromptu explanation for the fuss. Larsen's amputated black beard whirled round and round, still adhering to the rolling cogs, as we watched, while he stood by sullenly. We walked away down the block to hold a council, and also to let the group of mystified onlookers disperse. Of course, our first thought was to go for the police; but then we thought of Gloria.”
Dove sighed, and tapped out his long-expired pipe.
“Well,” he said, “that's pretty near the end of the story. I'm afraid association with Beauty blunts the sense of rectitude. No, we didn't do anything about it, except see to it that Larsen put back that coal in the cellar. I suppose we were really accessory to a misdemeanour, because we gathered from some small paragraphs we saw in the papers that a number of householders in that neighbourhood had been mysteriously robbed of their coal. To tell you the truth, we couldn't bear the thought of taking any action that would ruin Gloria's happiness. What were a few tons of black, filthy coal compared to that serene and golden-white beauty of hers, like some princess in a Norse fairy tale? The old man was a lunatic, we supposed, and would come to grief sooner or later. We were not going to be the ones to bring humiliation upon him.
“We walked back, stricken, to our lodgings; and as we passed the Physical Culture Chophouse we looked furtively through the window. We could see Gloria laying the tables for lunch, the tall, strong curve of her back as she leaned over, her capable white hands smoothing the cloth. None of us had the heart to go in.
“We clubbed together to pay for Mrs. Vesey's new supply of coal, although it broke our pocket-books for the next month or so. We were too hard up, then, to go on eating at Larsen's. We had to patronize a lunch-counter instead, where we gloomed over frankfurters and beans and quarrelled with one another, in sheer misery, as to which one of us Gloria had really liked best. We never saw her again, because about a week later the Larsen café shut up, and they disappeared.”
“And the calisthenics?” I said. “Did you go on with those?”
“No,” he said; “we were too melancholy. Also, as soon as Mrs. Vesey's coal arrived, we didn't need to. That was the terrible part of it. You see, Gloria had simply egged us on to do those exercises so that we wouldn't feel the chill when her father stole the coal. I'm afraid she was as guilty as he was, but we tried to convince ourselves that she was only a tool.”