“Pardon, madam, most sorry to disturb you, but my friend and me were out for a walk, and my friend has taken bad all of a sudden with a very troublesome turn, and he is out there on the road dead out and groaning. Would you have the goodness to let me use your telephone to telephone for an ambulance?”

“We haven’t a telephone,” said this devotchka. “I’m sorry, but we haven’t. You’ll have to go somewhere else.” From inside this malenky cottage I could slooshy the clack clack clacky clack clack clackity clackclack of some veck typing away, and then the typing stopped and there was this chelloveck’s goloss calling: “What is it, dear?”

“Well,” I said, “could you of your goodness please let him have a cup of water? It’s like a faint, you see. It seems as though he’s passed out in a sort of a fainting fit.”

The devotchka sort of hesitated and then said: “Wait.” Then she went off, and my three droogs had got out of the auto quiet and crept up horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now, then I put mine on, then it was only a matter of me putting in the old rooker and undoing the chain, me having softened up this devotchka with my gent’s goloss, so that she hadn’t shut the door like she should have done, us being strangers of the night. The four of us then went roaring in, old Dim playing the shoot as usual with his jumping up and down and singing out dirty slovos, and it was a nice malenky cottage, I’ll say that. We all went smecking into the room with a light on, and there was this devotchka sort of cowering, a young pretty bit of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her, and with her was this chelloveck who was her moodge, youngish too with horn-rimmed otchkies on him, and on a table was a typewriter and all papers scattered everywhere, but there was one little pile of paper like that must have been what he’d already typed, so here was another intelligent type bookman type like that we’d fillied with some hours back, but this one was a writer not a reader. Anyway, he said: