“I never sleep on sleepers, and if I don’t look my best, Greg will notice it and say it’s because I’ve been running myself ragged in Boston,” she explained, burrowing her head down under the covers, from which came forth the muffled request: “Please don’t open any windows; you know I can’t sleep where there’s too much air around; it distracts my attention.”
Jerry had made arrangements for tea with two Princeton men, and Joy had willingly consented to go with her. She was just in the mood for squeezing the orange of her good time in New York dry.
They met the Princetonites in the lobby—two well-tailored youths, with that sleek, parted-in-the-middle college expression. The taller of the two, one Steve Mitchell, combed Joy up and down in one competent sweep of the eyes, and annexed her, while the other, poetically called Harry Hanigan, followed Jerry, who had done no more than greet them airily, shove Joy at them just as airily, then make her way to the nearest door, which fronted on the line of taxis.
“This place always acts as if it were the Methodist quarterly conference,” Harry complained loudly. “Come on, Jerry; let’s put in a little pep.”
He stepped with Jerry inside the swinging door, and pushed it, starting off so fast they had to dart around with it in self-protection—or so it seemed. A gentleman around forty, of a comfortable figure, had happened to be entering the swinging doors on the other side, and he too was forced to dart around for self-protection. But whereas his expression was varied, Jerry and Harry seemed to be enjoying themselves. The pace of the revolving doors increased; it almost looked as if the gentleman of no longer comfortable proportions were running a marathon, while the two-in-one on the other side sped over more merrily.
“Why—they’re doing it on purpose!” Joy exclaimed.
Her companions looked about them at the crowd of grinning bellboys collecting, together with the scattering of guests who were pretending not to watch while keeping tabs on every round. “I should think Harry’d get sick of this; he’s done it in almost every hotel in New York,” he said restfully, and waited. The pace slackened; soon the two wedged themselves out of the pinwheel, and waited until, crimson-faced, the third party in the proceedings flew out and bore down upon them.
“Awfully sorry, sir,” said Harry earnestly. “I got packed in with this lady by mistake, and we were so confused we started whirling around—you can see how that would be—and then I lost my head and lost count——”
The intent to kill was by no means abated in the eye of the flaming one. With a hasty, “By George, Mary, we must catch the train; we’ve lost a lot of time with this gentleman here!” Harry seized Jerry and drifted through the revolving doors once more. No one went after them. Joy and Steve found them by a taxi outside, Harry leaning up against it in a Napoleonic attitude.
“Was that neat, or was it not?” he hailed them triumphantly. Steve helped the girls into the taxi, pushed Harry inside, and said to the man: “Drive to the Astor roof.”