"They go home when it comes summer. You doan' got to worry. It ain't like we need it to pay rent with. You got my word it's all righd, Miss—The name, blease—Miss what?"
"Par—Parlow. Lilly Parlow."
"All righd, Miss Parlow; that makes everything fine."
She opened her purse, unfolding a bill.
"I'll pay now," she said, calm with sudden decision.
"Sa-y, I would have trusted you. But you're like me, I always say money speaks louder than words."
"I'll be right back, Mrs. Neugass."
"That's good. I'll have out fresh towels. That's one thing I doan' expect from nobody is to stint on towels."
And so it came about that at the moment Robert Visigoth was confronted with a sudden gap in his program, Lilly Penny, with almost the week's lodging still to her credit, was tiptoeing through the moldy halls of the house in Forty-fourth Street, her luggage hitting against wall and banisters and a palpitating fear fuddling her haste.
At the second flight down she experienced her first and by no means fragrant encounter in these hallways. A door flew open with a rush and, her thin body wrapped in something ornate and flowing that was like a quick sheaf of flame around her, a woman dragged suddenly out to the head of the stairs, by the actual scruff of the neck, the ridiculous figure of a male, his collar—the necktie streaming from it—in his hand.