Yes, the announcer was drunk, the very radio was drunk, the instruments would not send the wave-lengths true, the ether could not carry them straight, they wavered and wiggled; the laws of the physical universe had gone staggering, God was drunk on His Throne, so pleased by the election of the greatesh man ever in White Housh. Bunny, dazed with exhaustion, saw the scene through a blur of sound and motion, the shining mouths of trumpets, the waving of flags, the flashing of electric signs, the cavorting of satyrs, the prancing of savages, the jiggling of financiers and their mistresses simulating copulation. Baby Belle was unsteady before the microphone, you lost parts of her song at each stagger; but snatches came, portraying the nymphomania of “Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp—hottes’ baby in the town—some scorcher—love’s torture—gal that burns ’em down!”
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” cried Ruth. “He’s trying to speak to me!” And so for an instant it seemed. Paul’s one eye had come open, wild and frightful; he lifted his head, he made a choking noise—
“Comes to lovin’—she’s an oven!” shrilled the radio voice.
“Paul! What is it?” shrieked Ruth.
“Ain’t it funny—paper money burns right in her hand!”
Paul sank back, he gave up, and Ruth, her two hands clasped as if praying to him, seemed to follow with her soul into that far-away place where he was going.
“Flamin’ Mamie, workin’ in a mine, ate a box o’ matches at the age o’ nine!”
“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Ruth put her hand over Paul’s heart, and then started up with a scream.
“Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp,” reiterated the chorus, “hottes’ baby in the town!”
And Ruth rushed to the window, and threw herself—no, not out, because Bunny had been too quick for her; the others helped to hold her, and the nurse came running with a hypodermic needle, and in a few minutes she was lying on a cot at the side of the room, looking as dead as her brother.