The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked.
Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan,
was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the
concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a
gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where
rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain
goat.
Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room
on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a
thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a
hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and
thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On
the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open
holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic.
At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through the
wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the
proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the
second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the
sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper
on which rested a cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a
correspondingly tiny silver cream pitcher.
"Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest's greeting, and his eyes smiled
and his lips smiled as he uttered it.
"Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as he busied himself with
making room on the reading stand for the tray and with pouring the
coffee and cream.
This done, without waiting further orders, noting that his master was
already sipping coffee with one hand while he made a correction on the
proof with the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir cap
from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. He ebbed away like
a shadow through the open French windows.
At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with a larger tray.
Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled
"Commercial Breeding of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was
simple yet fairly substantial--more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two
soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping
hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his
own raising and curing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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