«Will you dine here, sir, or out?» he asked.
«Here,» said Chalmers, «and in half an hour.» He listened glumly to the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street.
«Wait,» he said to the disappearing genie. «As I came home across the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in rows, and why are they there?»
«They are homeless men, sir,» said Phillips. «The man standing on the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the money will pay for to some lodging–house. That is why they stand in rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come.»
«By the time dinner is served,» said Chalmers, «have one of those men here. He will dine with me.»
«W–w–which—,» began Phillips, stammering for the first time during his service.
«Choose one at random,» said Chalmers. «You might see that he is reasonably sober—and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be held against him. That is all.»
It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high–flavored and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood.
On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily in the glow of the pink–shaded candles.
And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal—or held in charge a burglar—wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the line of mendicant lodgers.