"You bet!" said Lehman, taking the ticket from his mouth and handing it to the conductor.
The conductor took it, copied the number on to his plan, handed the ticket to the porter and the porter took him in and put him to bed again.
Lehman tried to say his evening prayer again, but couldn't remember it. While he was thinking it over the door at the ladies' end of the car opened and something came down the aisle. As this "something" came out of the ladies' apartment, it was presumably a woman. But Lehman disputes that fact to this day. She was about six feet long, nine inches wide, all the way, and about the color of a cowhide trunk. Her hair was in curl papers, her teeth in her pocket and her trust in Heaven. Like a grenadier she marched down the aisle until she came to the berth where Lehman was trying to die as painlessly as possible. Upon arriving here she pulled the curtains aside, sat down on the edge of the berth, jabbed Lehman in the stomach with her elbow, and said loudly—
"Lay over!"
Lehman groaned, got one look at the female, then placed both feet in the small of her back and shot her out on to the floor, yelling loudly for the police.
The car was in an uproar in an instant. Lehman was lying on his back, shouting "Police!" The female was screaming and hunting for her teeth. The conductor, the porter and the brakeman came running in to see whether it was a political discussion or just a murder. All the old lady could do was to mumble and hunt for her teeth. A man across the aisle swore that he saw Lehman stab the old lady with a bowie knife and throw her out into the aisle. The woman with the baby corroborated him, excepting that she thought he hit her with a piece of lead pipe.
By this time the old lady had found part of her Fletcherizing outfit and informed the congregation that she was neither struck nor stabbed; but that her husband in the berth there had certainly gone crazy.
There was a sympathetic chorus of "Oh!s" from the other passengers and the conductor jerked the curtains aside and asked Lehman what he meant by treating his wife this way.
"My wife?" screamed Lehman. "Why you —— —!$!—&—$&'o$—! Are you calling that old goat face my wife?"
"Sure that's your wife! Don't you suppose she knows?"