Peter shared the dim old seventh-floor apartment with two fellow bachelors, Henry Sidenham Lowe and the Worm. The three were sometimes known as the Seventh-Story Men. The phrase was Hy Lowe's and referred to the newspaper stories of that absurd kidnaping escapade--the Esther MacLeod case, it was--back in 1913. The three were a bit younger then.
Hy Lowe was a slim young man with small features that appeared to be gathered in the middle of his face. His job might have been thought odd anywhere save in the Greenwich Village region. After some years of newspaper work he had settled down to the managing editorship of a missionary weekly known as _My Brother's Keeper_. Hy was uncommunicative, even irreverent regarding his means of livelihood, usually referring to the paper as his meal ticket, and to his employer, the Reverend Doctor Hubbell Harkness Wilde (if at all) as the Walrus. In leisure moments, perhaps as a chronic reaction from the moral strain of his job, Hy affected slang, musical comedy and girls. The partly skinned old upright piano in the studio was his. And he had a small gift at juggling plates.
The Worm was a philosopher; about Peter's age, sandy in coloring but mild in nature, reflective to the point of self-effacement. He read interminably, in more than one foreign language and was supposed to write book reviews. He had lived in odd corners of the earth and knew Gorki personally. His name was Henry Bates.
Peter came slowly into the studio, threw off coat and hat and stood, the beginnings of a complacent smile on his face.
“Now that you've got her, what you gonna do with her?” queried Hy Lowe, without turning from the new song hit he was picking out on the piano.
“What am I gonna do with her?” mused Peter, hands deep in pockets, more and more pleased with his new attitude of mind--“I'm gonna vivisect her, of course.”
“Well, why not!” cried Peter, rousing. “If a girl leaves her home and strikes out for the self-expression thing, doesn't she forfeit the consideration of decent people? Isn't she fair game?”
Over in the corner by a window, his attention caught by this outbreak, the Worm looked up at Peter and reflected for a moment. He was deep in a Morris chair, the Worm, clad only in striped pajamas that were not over-equipped with buttons, and one slipper of Chinese straw that dangled from an elevated foot.