"What's your price?" I asked.
Germaine yawned and the shoulder strap of her gown slipped indiscreetly. "Since nobody seems to want me," she declared, "I'm going to stick around and see the fun. I wouldn't miss the sight of Winnie Tompkins trying to lead a changed life for all the doctors in the Medical Corps."
"Me too!" spat out Mrs. Rutherford. "There's something pretty mysterious going on here and I'm going to stay until I learn all the answers."
There was a tap at the bedroom door and Myrtle appeared, pulling two neatly set breakfast trays on a rubber-tired mahogany tea-wagon.
"I thought you would rather have your breakfast upstairs with the Master, mam," she remarked primly, in a far too English country-house manner. "Breakfast is waiting for Dr. and Mrs. Rutherford in the dining-room," she added.
And as she bent over the table and began to straighten out the breakfast things, the girl had the impudence to slip me a wink.
[CHAPTER 4]
After a pleasant breakfast, in the course of which my wife read the social news in the New York Herald-Tribune and I the business news in the New York Times, I excused myself and returned to my bedroom. Winnie's bathroom was fitted with all the gadgets, too, and there was an abundant choice of razors, from the old-fashioned straight-edge suicide's favorite to the 1941 stream-lined electric Yankee clipper. I tried out the scales and found that my involuntary host weighed over 195 pounds—a good deal of it around the middle. Oh, well, a few weeks of setting up exercises would take care of that. A cold shower and a brisk rub made me feel a little more presentable and I climbed shamelessly into Winnie's most manly tweeds.
"Are you catching the ten o'clock, dear?" Germaine called from her bedroom.