A French poodle with a newspaper in its mouth sat on a kitchen table directly in front of the dumbwaiter door and stared at Archie. Archie stared back. The poodle dropped the newspaper and its jaw hung open. Archie’s jaw also hung open.
One reason was that there were two more similar poodles perched on the table behind the first one. Archie blinked and looked again. Three additional poodles were lined up on the floor behind the table. The last one in the line also had a newspaper in its mouth. Archie blinked again and got hold of himself.
“Does Helen Steinberg live here?” he asked.
“Grrr! ” the first poodle growled.
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it!” Archie cringed as far back on the dumbwaiter platform as he could.
“Arf arf!" the second poodle commented.
“Bow-wow!” the third added.
“WOOF-WOOF!” from the floor. All three below in chorus. “WOOF-WOOF! WOOF-WOOF! WOOF-WOOF!”
“Shh!” Archie held a finger to his lips. “Do you want to wake everybody up?”
The lead dog snarled by way of answer. The others simply barked louder. Archie decided that Helen Steinberg or no Helen Steinberg, this was an untenable situation. He reached for the door to close it. The first poodle snapped at his fingers, missing them by a scant half-inch. Archie hastily pulled back his hand and put it under his arm where it would be out of reach of the canine’s canines.
“That’s not very hospitable,” Archie told the dog plaintively.
“What are you doing there?” The dogs’ yelping had finally brought results. An elderly man with a military bearing, a natty gray beard, and a clipped mustache stood in the doorway to the kitchen and addressed Archie. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Helen Steinberg,” Archie said weakly.
“Well, she doesn’t live here. This isn’t the Steinberg apartment.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Archie reflected a minute. The dogs had subsided to a low-key chorus of snarls now. “Umm, do you have a kennel here or something?” Archie asked-
“Certainly not! These are The Performing Pups Of Paris, the most highly trained troupe of canines in vaudeville.”
“I thought vaudeville was dead.”
“It will come back. Have faith. In the end, it will come back. Those flat shadows they call movies can’t last. Only a fad. They can never permanently replace live entertainment.”
“Forty ears. That’s quite a fad.”
“Ah. You see? It’s drawing to a close. You’re quite right. It can’t last much longer. That’s why I have trained these superb pooches. When vaudeville returns, I will be ready. It won’t be long now. You’ll be the star attraction at the Palace,” he promised the first dog, scratching its ears. “Then we will laugh at them all.”
“Very interesting,” Archie said. “Well, I’m afraid I have to be going now.” He reached very tentatively for the dumbwaiter door, keeping a sharp eye on the closeset dog .
“Wait!” the old man barked imperiously, holding up his hand with a dramatic flourish. “Where do you think you’re going with that dumbwaiter?”
“Well, to the Steinberg apartment. I don t really want the dumbwaiter, but—-”
“Do you realize that‘ you’re throwing The Performing Pups of Paris off their schedule? Years of training and by hogging that dumbwaiter, you could spoil it all. You establish certain patterns with dogs. Break the pattern, and you confuse them. Before you know it, the whole fabric of their training begins to unravel. It may seem only a small thread that you’re pulling to you, but It could be disastrous!”
“Just what is this small thread you’re talking about?” Archie wanted to know.
“The dumbwaiter. Don’t you understand? Every morning at this time these delicate animals go to the dumbwaiter. Poopsie here”-—he patted the lead dog—“lays down the newspaper. Then each of them relieves himself in turn. Lastly comes Coco”—-he pointed at the dog standing at the back of the line on the floor-—“and when he is done, he covers it over with his newspaper. I have a deal with the janitor to remove the droppings at six o’clock promptly each morning.”
“They certainly are very neat,” Archie concluded. “But the problem is I’m stuck in here with all this stuff, as you can see, and I don’t think I’d want to add their contributions to it, even if it is wrapped in newspaper. I mean, look at it from my point of view.”
“Wait!” the old man snapped his fingers. “I think I can see a compromise solution. If you will lower the dumbwaiter so that the roof is at the level of this aperture, then the beasts can substitute that portion for the floor of the dumbwaiter and conclude their business.”
“If you think I’m going to sit here while a bunch of mutts--”
“Then I shall have to call the janitor!”
“—on top of my head, you’re out of your— What?”
“I shall have to call the janitor.”
“Oh.” Archie weighed it quickly. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “Have it your way.” He pulled the rope and slowly lowered the dumbwaiter.
“Far enough. Stop.” The old man called from above.
Archie stopped. There was the rustle of newspaper over his head. Then a delicate tinkling sound followed by a muted plop-plop, a scratching sound and the even more muted adding of paw-steps. This was repeated five more times and concluded with the rustling o a second newspaper being spread. When all was silent, Archie pulled the dumbwaiter up again.
“The performance is concluded,” the old man told him as he handed out dog yummies to the pooches. “I want you to know, sir, that you are the very first person to perceive The Performing Pups of Paris in action.”
“Well, I guess ‘perceive’ is the right word. I didn’t see them, but I heard them. And I believe I can still perceive the aroma of their performance. Now, I wonder if you can tell me Just which of these two doors might lead to the Steinberg apart --”
It was too late for Archie to get an answer. The old man, evidently miffed at what must have seemed to him unseemly levity toward his dogs, had closed the dumbwaiter door in Archie's face. Archie sighed, picked one of the two remaining doors at random and knocked loudly on it.
The door flew open immediately. A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform peered nearsightedly at Archie. She looked Scandinavian. “Ay don’t vant to buy nothin’,” she announced, her accent confirming her appearance. She started to close the door in Archie’s face.
“Wait a minute!” He leaned on it firmly, holding it open. “Is this the Steinberg apartment?”
“No. Iss ‘next door.” She started to close the door, then paused and looked at Archie shrewdly. “You bane a relative of theirs, I betcha,” she guessed.
“No I'm not. What makes you think that?”
“Yus that you don’t lookin’ Jewish,” she told him. “An’ you bane comin’ up the dumbwaiter, I figure sure you a relative from the Steinbergs.”
“But why should—?”
Once again Archie’s question was cut off by the door closing in face. He shrugged off this second rebuff, and his unfinished question with it, and pounded on the third door. It took a moment or two before his pounding drew a response and the door was opened.
The middle-aged woman standing there had her hair braided for sleep. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown with a wool robe thrown over it. She was still blinking her eyes, having just been awakened by Archie’s knocking. “So what’s the tsimmis?” she asked.
Archie didn’t answer immediately. He was still trying to reconcile her heavy Jewish accent with her appearance. She had the angular body of a farm woman and her face looked like the Spirit of New England as it might have been painted by Grant Wood. It was etched right out of Pilgrim’s Progress, gray-brown hairbraid and all.