The telephone bell was shrilling insistent summons in his apartment when Gary pushed open the hall door thirty feet away. Even though he took long steps, he hoped the nagging jingle would cease before he could reach the ’phone. But the bell kept ringing, being an automatic telephone, dependent upon no perfunctory Central for the persistency of its call. Gary was tired, and from his neck to his waist his skin was painted a coppery bronze which, having been applied at six-thirty that morning, was now itching horribly as the grease paint dried. He did not feel like talking to any one; but he unlocked his door, jerked down the receiver and barked a surly greeting into the mouthpiece of the ’phone. Almost immediately the wrinkles on his forehead slid down into smoothness. “Oh, _how_-do, Gary! I was just wondering if you had changed your apartments or something,” called the girl whom he hoped some day to marry. “Did you just get in?” “No-o--certainly not! _I_’ve been having a fit on the floor! Say, I heard you ringing the ’phone a block away. Every tenant in the joint is lined up on the sidewalk, watching for the Black Maria or the ambulance; they don’t know which. But I recognized your ring. What’s on your mind, Girlie?” “Not a thing in the world but a new shell comb. If I’d known you were so terrifically cross this evening, I wouldn’t have a lovely dinner all waiting and a great big surprise for you afterwards. Now I won’t tell you what it is. And, furthermore, I shall not give you even a hint of what you’re going to eat when you get here. But I should think a man who could recognize a certain telephone ring a block away might smell fried chicken and strawberry shortcake clear across the city--with oodles of butter under the strawberries, and double cream----” “Oh-h, _boy_!” Gary brightened and smacked his lips into the mouthpiece, just as any normal young man would do. Then, recalling his physical discomfort, he hedged a little. “Will it keep? I’m in a starving condition as usual--but listen, Pat; I’m a savage under my shirt. Just got in from location away up in Topanga Cañon, and I never stopped to get off anything but the rainbow on my cheeks and my feathered war bonnet. Had a heck of a day--I’ll tell the world! You know, honey; painted warriors hurtling down the cliff shooting poisoned arrows at the hapless emigrants--_that_ kind of hokum. Big Chief Eagle Eye has been hurtling and whooping war whoops since ten o’clock this morning. Dinner’ll have to wait while I take a bath and clean up a little. I look like a bum and that’s a fact. Say, listen, honey----” “Aw, take that mush off the line. Ha-ang up!” Some impatient neighboring tenant with a bad temper was evidently cutting in.