Houlihan's Surrender

A STORY

by JAMES McCONKEY

HOULIHAN, a white-haired old giant with a slight stoop, came to live at Mrs, Goetz’s rooming house the day after his wife was buried. His face was a dark tan from a lifetime of peering from the cab of a freight locomotive, and there were little squint-wrinkles around his redveined eyes, and he had a big blunt Irish nose and his hair was long and curly and fell down over his forehead in a defiant sort of way.

Mrs. Goetz, looking curiously out at him through a hole in her faded chintz curtains while he paid the Yellow Cab driver from a big wad of bills tied together with an old piece of string, was angry with him for his size. He was even taller than she was, and she was a good six feet; and he probably outweighed her by at least twenty pounds. He stumbled against the curb, and then pulled himself up on the sidewalk with the absurd clumsiness of an elderly lion. He was not at all like that little prune of a man, Mr. Kramper, who slept in 4A, right under the attic, and had mouse eyes and a mouse squeak for a voice.

She had expected her new roomer to be another sentimental little man like Mr. Kramper, a sickly old gentleman she could first feed and then order about, and she felt a great irritation with Mr. Kramper that Houlihan shouldn’t be so; for Mr. Kramper had been the one who arranged that Houlihan should get the room. Mr. Kramper had been Houlihan’s fireman on the New York to Pittsburgh freight run for ten years, and had told her (his voice trembling with pride and excitement) what a good man Houlihan was, that he had been devoted to his wife and spent all his leisure reading books; but Mr. Kramper slyly had not mentioned how massive Houlihan was.

The seventeen years since the death of her husband, in which period she had been sole master of fifteen roomfuls of people, had imparted to Mrs. Goetz a sense of dictatorial supremacy which was strengthened not only by her height but by her hard-muscled and heavy arms and legs, and by the wisp of blond hair under her nose. The look of Houlihan alone, standing on the doorstep and insistently ringing the bell, was a challenge to her. She let the bell ring for a couple of minutes, becoming angrier all the while, and then walked slowly out the front hall to the door, opening it halfway. “You don’t need to wear out the bell, Mr. Houlihan,” she said with all the irony of her soul. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to show up, and couldn’t get my shopping done.”

There were recent food stains spattered on his baggy brown trousers, and he was wearing a faded green smoking jacket with holes burned in the sleeves and on the lapel. Mr. Kramper’s clothes were always neat and clean and he kept a deodorant on the shelf above his washbasin. Mr. Houlihan smelled of tobacco. Ho acted as if he hadn’t heard her remark, and looked right past her, squinting in the gloom as if he didn’t sec her at all. She had intended to lead him up to the fourth floor and show him his room, but instead she pressed the key into his hand. “Room 4B,” she said sharply. “I change sheets every two weeks and no sooner, and if you wipe your shoes with the hand towel it 11 be a dollar extra. I don’t allow smoking in bed, and your rent’s payable in advance, six-fifty for the week.

Only then did he look at her, and the look he gave her was a contemptuous one. He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and pushed twenty-six dollars at her. “Here’s a month’s rent,” he said, and his voice was gruff and deep. He had a gold tooth in front that gleamed when he talked, even in the faint light of the single bulb that glowed behind the dust of the glass chandelier above. “And i’ll be pleased to you, Mrs. Goetz, if you don’t bother coming into my room at all. I’ll buy my own sheets, and have them washed, too, and I don’t want any woman sniffing around and putting my room in order.”

His voice was somewhat like that of the Irish cop who shouted at the traffic outside, and there was something in the sound of it that commanded respect; but Mrs. Goetz was angry at the way he pronounced the word woman: it was sacrilege, what with his wife just dead and buried. She didn’t say anything, however, while he picked up his suitcase and started up the wide stairway. He stumbled on the third step from the second floor landing, where the carpeting had a hole in it, and she shouted after him in fine satisfaction: “Watch your step, old man!” And after he had silently made the turn at the second floor and started up the creaking third flight of stairs, she leaned over the banister and shouted up the stairwell: “I reserve the right to look into the rooms I rent whenever I want to, Mister Houlihan!”

Old Kramper was still in bed; at six o’clock she usually brought him his supper if she didn’t hear him moving about, but this day she waited until seven-thirty.

2

AFTER Mrs. Goetz, silently and hostilely, had carried away his supper dishes, frail little Mr. Kramper lay long in bed, quivering both with anticipation and with the fever which his cold had brought. He had heard the sounds Houlihan had made, climbing the stairway, and heard him cuss a little as he tried to unlock his door in the dim light of the hallway; and then Mr. Kramper heard bangs from the room next door as Houlihan apparently changed the position of the bed and desk.

Mr. Kramper thought Mrs. Goetz might come up when she heard the noise, and demand that the furniture be put back where she wanted it; for, when Mr. Kramper first moved into his room, he changed the position of his desk, and threw into the wastebasket a picture that had been tacked on the back of his door. It was a color picture from the Sunday Mirror which displayed Deanna Durbin in a sweater; not the kind of picture for an old man’s room at all. On Saturday, Mrs. Goetz cleaned up the room while he was out for supper, and put the desk back where it had been, marking the spot with chalk on the floor where it belonged; and she straightened out the crumpled picture and tacked it back on the door. Sunday morning, she accosted Mr, Kramper in the downstairs hallway as he was stepping unobtrusively out to attend the early Methodist service, and told him not to tamper with her pictures. “Besides,” she said, “it’s good for an old man to look at a young girl with big breasts once in a while.” And then, to his dismay, she brayed loud and long, and the sound followed him as he ran out the door and ducked around the corner by the drugstore. He had never been able to invite his cronies in the Brotherhood or the Borrowed Time Club up to his room because of that picture. It was shameful, but there was nothing he could do.

Tonight, he kept expecting a rap on the door from Houlihan, after he got himself settled in his room; but Houlihan never came. For a while, Mr. Kramper enjoyed his sorrow and made the tears come to his eyes; but then he remembered that Houlihan had always been like this. You always had to go to Houlihan, for Houlihan never came to you: he was too noble and proud a soul for that. Probably Houlihan was waiting in his room now for him to call. Mr. Kramper hastily pulled his trousers over his pajama pants, and trotted over to knock on Houlihan’s door.

Houlihan opened the door part way, squinting at Kramper. “I thought it was the old hag,” he muttered, but never showed any gladness that it was Mr. Kramper instead. He left the door open, and Mr, Kramper hesitantly entered, and sat himself down on the edge of the single chair in the room, like a nervous young life insurance salesman, while Houlihan fell down heavily upon the bed. Houlihan’s coat was slung across the foot of the bed, and his suitcase, lying open, was in the far corner of the room, and in it were some soiled shirts. The rest of the suitcase must have contained books, for he had books lined up across the back of the desk, and other books spread out over the bed. He had apparently been lying on the bed with his shoes on without first removing the bedspread, Mr. Kramper noticed, shocked, that he had no picture of Mrs. Houlihan in the room.

“I thought you might be lonely,” Mr. Kramper said awkwardly.

Houlihan relaxed on the bed, lit his pipe, and picked up one of his books, leafing through to find his place. It was Stories of Red Hanrahan by Yeats, W. B. Mr. Kramper coughed against his sleeve, and then offered: “I know how it is, Houlihan, when you first lose your wife. I remember how lonely I was, after my wife had gone.” He always had been self-conscious with the word “death,” and usually would find a means of circumventing its use.

Houlihan had started to frown, but went on with his reading.

“You’re looking well, Houlihan, for a man that’s just lost his wife.”

Houlihan’s lips moved as he tried to concentrate on his reading. Mr. Kramper noted once more the jumbled condition of the room, and felt a sudden surge of pity for his old engineer. “Houlihan,” he said softly, “poor Houlihan, you’re a lost soul now like all the rest of us.”

Houlihan threw the book down savagely and jumped to his feet, towering over Mr. Kramper, who promptly sank far back into his chair and lowered his head. “I’ll be greatly indebted to you, Mr. Kramper, not to offer me any of your dewyeyed condolences,” he said coldly.

Mr. Kramper, though embarrassed, still was impressed by the way Houlihan could talk. It was the Irish in him, he supposed. Houlihan always had been able to use beautiful language whenever he was angry. Mr. Kramper sighed to himself, thinking how splendid it would be to have Houlihan in the Club. Once Houlihan became a member, it would be only a matter of time before he became president. The thought of it so excited Mr. Kramper that he spoke up immediately, though Houlihan was still glowering down at him. “Houlihan,” he said, “now that you’re alone, you’ll want to join us in the Club. Lots of the retired Brotherhood, like Kirkpatrick and Phillips and Jorgenson, belong to the Club, Houlihan.”

“What club?” Houlihan was staring at him, his eyes narrowed. “I never was one for joining clubs and wasting my time with silly chatter, Kramper.”

“You had your wife before,” said Mr. Kramper with proper sorrow. “We call ourselves the Borrowed Time Club, Houlihan. There’s clubs all over the United States, and we limit ourselves to members over sixty-five who’ve retired.” Mr. Kramper hadn’t noticed the glint in Houlihan’s eyes, and he went on at a great rate: “Oh, you’ll have yourself a wonderful time, Houlihan. We meet Tuesdays regular, and several other times a week too. There’s a hundred of us in the city, and we meet for dinner and then talk.”

“And pray tell, what do you talk about?” Houlihan’s voice was strangely courteous, but Mr. Kramper did not take warning.

“We have a lot in common,” he said, waving his arms vaguely.

“Like your ages and your ailments, I presume?”

“Now look here, Houlihan!” In his zeal, Mr. Kramper clambered suddenly from his chair and stared upward into Houlihan’s massive nostrils. “You might as well get used to the fact that you ain’t a boy no longer. Young people don’t care much for the old ones. My boy lives in San Francisco, and writes me a letter maybe once a month. The Borrowed Time Club keeps old folks like us from being lonely, and sees to it that we get a good turnout when we flee this mortal coil.”

“This mortal coil, eh?” Houlihan said viciously. So you spend your measly metered time sniveling from funeral to funeral, do you, old man?” In his wrath, his nostrils contracted and dilated, and Mr. Kramper s gaze was frozen involuntarily upon them. “You spend your time looking at stiff white corpses and congratulating yourselves that you outlived that one, I suppose? I’ll be pleased to you, Mr. Kramper, not to bother me with such cowardly notions.” He strode angrily back and forth across the room, and with each step the floor boards creaked; and in his fury he stumbled against Mr. Kramper’s feet.

“You’ll find time hangs heavy on your shoulders now, Houlihan,” Mr. Kramper prophesied meekly, pulling his feet into the chair. “You won’t be knowing what to do with yourself.”

“Won’t, eh?” Houlihan was coldly superior, and he pointed at his books. “Do you and your rheumy old friends think that Yeats belonged to a Borrowed Time Club? Or George Bernard Shaw, maybe? Or Jesus O’Christ Himself?”

“He died young,” Mr. Kramper protested weakly, dismayed by the sacrilege.

“’Tis of no matter,” Houlihan said savagely. “Had he lived to a ripe old seventy, do you think He ever would have succumbed to such a mental affliction? Any Englishman might fall to such an evil state, but never Shaw nor Jesus Christ.”

“You’ve read a lot of books, Houlihan,” said Mr. Kramper, his eyes shining with worship. “That’s one of the things I always looked up to you for. Whenever they used to ask me who I was fireman for, I’d say, ’Houlihan — you know, the one that reads the books.’ ”

Houlihan softened at the tone in Mr. Kramper’s voice, and stood over him again, his voice trumpeting: “Keep your intellect alert, Mr. Kramper. ‘Tis the only way. Read about the heroes of classical antiquity, and try to be like them. Be like Caesar. Be like Ulysses.”

Mr. Kramper was overpowered by this literary knowledge. “But didn’t Caesar and this other fellow have wives and families?” he inquired respectfully. “In them days, folks had more kinfolk, and their children stayed to home. It was the auto that brought the curse to old men, Houlihan.”

Houlihan impatiently waved aside the remark. “’Tis no wonder that the Irish have written about the great heroes, Mr. Kramper,” he thundered. “Shaw wrote about Caesar, and Joyce about Ulysses, though he weakened and gave him a Jew name. The Irish don’t cry out their loneliness.”

Mr. Kramper persisted in following his own peculiar logic. “But didn’t Shaw have a family and friends?” he asked.

“Shaw’s still alive, Kramper,” Houlihan said grandiloquently. “Still alive at ninety, and younger’n you at twenty. Been living on herbs and grass like a cow, and thriving on ‘em. Sure, he had a wife, and he married her so that she could clean up his room quietly, and never bother him. It was none of this deary-deary attachment, and ‘Do you have your rubbers on, Georgie ?’ There’s a man for you, Kramper: he knows a woman’s just out to tie herself around the male like a spider, but he never let himself be drawn into the web.”

Mr. Kramper’s face lost color. He clenched his lingers together. “For shame,” he said with passion. “You’re forgetting your own wife’s passing, Houlihan.”

“Certainly I am,” replied Houlihan coolly. “The only way to be a man is to live for the future, and don’t you ever forget that, Mr. Kramper. Keep hope in your heart, and be damned to the past, even if it means chasing moonbeams through the mist, like Red Hanrahan following the hounds. I presume, Mr. Kramper, that you never heard of that great symbol of Ireland, Red Hanrahan?” Houlihan’s voice had gathered so much in loudness that it reverberated throughout the room. Fortunately, Mr. Kramper had no opportunity to admit of his ignorance, for downstairs Mrs. Goetz began to hit vigorously on the water pipe with a hammer.

“That slut!” cried Houlihan; but Kramper was horrified. “Re quiet, Houlihan, shell be up here with the hammer next,” he breathed, and decided, for the present, to give up his plan to bring Houlihan into the Club.

Houlihan lay back on the bed, rubbing his shoes on the bedspread and smiling. He picked up his book once more, opening it at the middle. Mr. Kramper, slinking toward the door, noticed how red and bleary Houlihan’s eyes were. “You ought to be getting yourself some glasses, Houlihan,” he said, but Houlihan only snorted derisively. As the door closed between himself and Houlihan, Mr. Kramper gathered a bit more courage. “We’re meeting this Tuesday, Houlihan,” he said. “Ill stop by on my way, to see if you’ve changed your mind.”

Houlihan made a vulgar sound, and Mr. Kramper shuddered, remembered his cold, and coughed loudly.

3

THE next day Houlihan bought himself a hot plate and a tremendous bag of groceries, and carried them to his room, brushing right past Mrs. Goetz although she shouted at him that she wasn’t going to allow him to smell up her house with his cooking, He locked himself in his room, and left the key in the lock; and never came out that day, or the next, or so far as anyone could tell, any days thereafter. Airs. Goetz pounded on his door whenever she smelled the food, and the occupant of room 4C put in a complaint; but Houlihan never replied to Mrs. Goetz’s noisy threats.

Mr. Kramper knocked on Houlihan’s door Tuesday as he had promised, and the following Tuesday as well, but Houlihan refused to go to the Club. Once, however, he did favor Mr. Kramper with admittance, and Mr. Kramper saw the rows of canned goods stacked on the floor, the empty cans in the wastebasket, and the slab of ham tied to the window handle and dangling outside. “You must be like a bear,” he said in astonishment, “holing up for the winter!”

“Certainly ‘hole’ is a fine way of describing this room which you were so kind to find for me, Mr. Kramper,” Houlihan said: and it was the only reference he had ever made to Mr. Kramper’s efforts in his behalf. Rooms for six-fifty were hard to find downtown, but Mr. Kramper bore Houlihan no ill will. “ Don’t you never go outside? ” Mr. Kramper asked incredulously.

“Only when the clock strikes midnight,” Houlihan answered poetically; “and then but to sally forth to replenish my cans of pork and beans.”

“You should go outside, and sit in the park,” Mr. Kramper said. “The air is fine these cold evenings.” He was beginning to worry about the welfare of his old engineer: the room was dusty, and had begun to smell of dirty clothes and perspiration ; and the bed had never been made, nor a sheet changed. Houlihan himself was unshaven and dirty, and his clothes looked as if he never took them off when he went to bed. There was a tear on Houlihan’s trousers by the knee, and a bruise on his cheek. He looked thinner, but his voice was robust as ever. His eyes were strange and bulging, like the eyes of a suffering old monk.

“What do you do all day long?” asked Mr. Kramper in wonderment.

“Cook my meals and read my books and chase the moonbeams of my youth,” Houlihan retorted promptly. “I’m living as a pure essence, Air. Kramper, as I’ve always dreamed of doing; and I’ll never compromise myself, now that I know the meaning of all existence, with the chatter of dulled and wizened old men.”

But Mr. Kramper had not mentioned the Borrowed Time Club at all, having given up Houlihan as a lost cause. This remark aroused his hope once more. “I’ve told them about you, Houlihan,” he said. “They were all disappointed you haven’t come. There’s Kirkpatrick, who used to take your Pittsburgh run on your day off: he’d like to see you again.”

“I’ll see Kirkpatrick in hell first,” Houlihan replied, the glint back in his eye. “He never was as good an engineer as me, and his intelligence was a disgrace to his race.”

“That’s true enough,” Mr. Kramper loyally admitted; but his concern for Houlihan’s welfare made him speak further. “He’s looking fine and healthy, though, and you’re beginning to resemble one of them moonbeams you talk about.”

This drove Houlihan into a high rage. “I’m a better man than any of your doddering old idiots,” he shouted. He grabbed Mr. Kramper by the shoulder and shook him so that his bones clattered together. “You tel! them so, do you hoar?”

But Mrs. Goetz was pounding at the door again, and shouting, “Shut up your noise, Mr. Houlihan! I’ve never had police disgrace my house, but they’ll come after you, Houlihan, if you don’t behave!”

Houlihan let go of Mr. Kramper’s shoulder, and Mr. Kramper shrank back into the chair, wiping his forehead nervously, wondering if Houlihan had gone insane. “Oh, God in Heaven,” cried Houlihan in despair, “won’t the world ever allow man to fight his struggle without the voice of woman? She’s my own dead wife, Mr. Kramper, come back to haunt and scold: ‘Clean your room,’ ‘Keep your feet of!" the bed,’ and ‘Don’t you shout at me, you wicked old man!’”

“Houlihan!” shouted Mr. Kramper in dismay. “Don’t never talk like that no more.” And then and there, Mr. Kramper closed his eyes, bowed his head, and said a silent prayer,

Houlihan was a man out of his senses. “You blithering fool!” he shouted. “You expect God to help you or me? We’re gone, Kramper, past all hope or care. God loves the spring and growing things, and lets the old wither and die.” He threw himself back on his bed with such force that one of the slats gave way with a loud crack, and he moaned for a time until some saliva caught in his throat, and then ho coughed and reached for his book.

Mr. Kramper, shivering, watched him, and couldn’t hold back his surprise. “Why, that’s the same book you were reading the first night,” he cried. “And you’re still in the middle!”

Houlihan wound up and threw the book. It smashed the window glass and flew out into the air, its pages flailing like a monstrous many-winged bird. And then Mr. Kramper looked into Houlihan’s red-smeary eyes, and he finally knew. “Oh, Houlihan,” he bleated, “oh, Houlihan, you’re blind!” He scrambled out of the chair and bent over the bed. “What is it, Houlihan? Can’t you see at all?”

“I can see you well enough,” Houlihan cried, and made a lunge for Mr. Kramper as he rose from the bed, but Mr. Kramper easily side-stepped him and he fell against the wall, breathing hard. When Houlihan straightened up again, Mr. Kramper could see the tears on his cheek following the course of the wrinkles there.

“Get out of my room,” said Houlihan in a voice suddenly calm, and Mr. Kramper went.

4

WITH a certain fear, Mr. Kramper told Mrs. Goetz about Houlihan. “Like an elephant,” she said, “he’s come here to die. Or like an old lion.” And in sudden anger, she turned upon Mr. Kramper: “I told you I wanted no dying men here.”

“I think it’s his eyes only,” Mr. Kramper whispered. “His eyes were red when he first came, but they are almost burned out now. One of the men in the Club, Frank Gibbons, has cataracts in both his eyes. They never bothered him for years. Now he’s blind. When he comes to the meeting, his son brings him; and we have to feed him with a spoon.”

“A man like that’s apt to burn down my house, cooking his meals,” Mrs. Goetz said. “I won’t have him cooking meals up there, or smoking, either.”

So, when she prepared Mr. Kramper’s supper, she made a double portion of it, and told him to leave half with Houlihan. Mr. Kramper knocked on Houlihan’s door, but Houlihan made no sound. “Tell him,” Mrs. Goetz shouted up the stair well, “if he doesn’t unlock the door tonight, tomorrow I’ll have the police.”

Mr. Kramper sighed when he heard that, but Mrs. Goetz remained at the bottom of the stairs, waiting; and Mr. Kramper could do nothing but repeat what she had told him to say, his voice trembling and apologetic. Then he left the food by the crack at Houlihan’s door, hoping the smell would bring him out.

Houlihan must have eaten the food, for the next morning the dishes were stacked outside his door, empty; and the marvel of it all to Mr. Kramper was that they were neatly washed and dried. When he told Mrs. Goetz of that, she nodded wisely and decided not to call the police; and it was obvious to them both that the struggle was almost over. When he tried Houlihan’s door just before he left for the Club, Mr. Kramper found it unlocked. Houlihan was sitting in his chair, and he was wearing his green smoking jacket, and his face was smoothly shaven, although there was a nick under his nose from which the blood still came.

“I have decided to come with you, Mr. Kramper,” Houlihan said with grave detachment. “Please give me your hand and help me down the stairs.”

And so, with Houlihan leaning on his shoulder, Mr. Kramper led him down the stairs and out the door; and all the time, Mrs. Goetz was staring after them, but neither she nor Houlihan said a word, and Mr. Kramper wasn’t even sure that Houlihan had seen Mrs. Goetz.

The meeting of the Club that night was short, for the men all planned to attend the funeral parlor where Kirkpatrick, who had died unexpectedly, lay waiting for his burial. Their clubroom was on the second floor of a frame building over a grocery store, and contained nothing but chairs and tables. Pictures of all the deceased members decorated two walls, and Kirkpatrick’s picture stood on the chairman’s table, surrounded by roses. The men were all glad to see Houlihan, both those who knew him from his railroading days, and those who only knew him from the many admiring stories which Mr. Kramper had related. Mr. Kramper led Frank Gibbons over to Houlihan, and the two men shook hands; but Houlihan refused to talk about his eyes.

Houlihan said little, but smiled at the men around him when they came close; and he went with them in one of the long black cars which the undertaker had provided. They arrived at the funeral parlor about eight o’clock; and only then, before he saw the casket, was Houlihan the man he’d been the week before. “Funerals,” Houlihan declaimed loudly, “are the sign of the decadence of our age, Kramper. It’s the savage returned to us that makes us gloat over a dead soul, a shriveled-up nonentity that unfortunately, like all of us” — waving his finger dramatically at Mr. Kramper — “survived his wits and real friends by ten years. That remark was made before me by a greater man than any of us, by Mr. Shaw himself; and ‘tis a sign of his greatness that to him it doesn’t apply.”

Mr. Kramper was beginning to regret Houlihan s presence now as much as he had been hoping for it before; and he began to turn crimson, so much had he identified himself with his old engineer; but Houlihan became pale and rigid as the men, one by one, filed past him to look at Kirkpatrick, who lay surrounded by flowers in his casket, his cheeks puffed out unnaturally, and a strange tranquil expression on his face. A smell of flowers and chemicals was heavy in the air, and somewhere in the distance a cracked phonograph record played austere and heavenly organ music. Some of the men had brought little red roses with them, and after gazing upon their deceased Club member, dropped their tokens into the casket. Mr. Kramper sat next to Houlihan in one of the little folding chairs, never dreaming that he would wish to look into the casket, too; but Houlihan rose abruptly, and Mr. Kramper rose with him, and together they looked into the casket. Houlihan suddenly put his hand down and rubbed it across the face of Kirkpatrick, feeling the waxen smoothness ol his cheek; and then he rubbed his own. Then, with composure, “I’d like to go home now,” Houlihan said in a low voice; and Mr. Kramper instantly breathed, “Yes, yes, of course,” and he scurried for the entrance of the building, holding Houlihan’s hand. Mr. Kramper nodded and whispered apologetically to the men looking curiously after them: “It’s the excitement, I think. Don’t worry your heads about us. I’ll hire a taxi.”

When they reached the rooming house, Mr. Kramper led Houlihan upstairs, where they met Mrs. Goetz, who had just finished cleaning up Houlihan’s room. Clean, starched sheets wore on the bed, the floor had been washed and a clean rug placed upon it, and all the books had been neatly piled into an old soapbox and put on the shelf in the closet. She had taken the empty cans from the wastebasket and put the still unopened ones alongside the hot plate in the hall. “Now, Mr. Houlihan,” she said firmly but not without kindness, “I’m taking this food of yours downstairs, and I’ll use it for your meals. I’ll cook your food and have Mr. Kramper bring it up to you, and you mustn’t try to do any more cooking of your own. And for the sake of everybody, you won’t be able to smoke unless Mr. Kramper or I am with you; and please take off your shoes before you climb into bed, and try to be more considerate of your neighbors than you have in the past.”

“All right, Mrs. Goetz,” said Houlihan quietly, and he walked slowly over to his bed and felt the pillow as he had the cheek of Kirkpatrick. “All right,” he said again, and then started to lie down on the bed, but sat in the chair instead. Mrs. Goetz began to smile, and she was still smiling when she closed the door, and that night she cooked T-bone steaks for both Houlihan and Mr. Kramper.

“Mr. Kramper, I think we have turned your friend into a gentleman,” Mrs. Goetz said triumphantly, when she brought the food to him; and Mr. Kramper nodded and said that he was sure she was right.

And Mr. Kramper, who stayed awake most of the night with his ear next to the wall that separated his room from Houlihan’s, never heard anything from Houlihan except when his shoes dropped on the floor, and then a muffled cough, followed by the sound of his regular, quiet breathing.