Explore "In Alcala" by P. G. Wodehouse on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In Alcala, as in most of New York's apartment houses, the schedule of prices is like a badly rolled cigarette -- thick in the middle and thin at both ends. The rooms halfway up are expensive; some of them almost as expensive as if Fashion, instead of being gone forever, were still lingering. The top rooms are cheap, the ground-floor rooms cheaper still.
Cheapest of all was the hall-bedroom. Its furniture was of the simplest. It consisted of a chair, another chair, a worn carpet, and a folding-bed. The folding-bed had an air of depression and baffled hopes. For years it had been trying to look like a bookcase in the daytime, and now it looked more like a folding-bed than ever. There was also a plain deal table, much stained with ink. At this, night after night, sometimes far into the morning, Rutherford Maxwell would sit and write stories. Now and then it happened that one would be a good story, and find a market.