manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel
of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island,
vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but
of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations.

You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was an
apartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated on
the windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type from
the pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine,
mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, to
the pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with a
small mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded with
paper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom with
a sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales,
and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles,
sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negro
maid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a private
telephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb that
turned on automatically to the opening of the door.

There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponent
of that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker," a roll of money in
his pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in for
light checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across his
waistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in a
large corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent and
expensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters;
wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public,
white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-year
scale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and three