Judge — February 1935 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Warm Soup Mystery By R.L. McKelvey TER considerable reflection, Mrs. A Lewis decided that she could trace the cause of that ghastly night straight back to that magazine ad- vertisement which had suggested hot soup instead of a glass of cold milk for a hungry husband's midnight lunch. But she never could figure out what had happened. She remembered her small part in the nig! izing clarity: her joy at knowing her- If to be so thoughtful of her husband's fort, her anticipation of the kind things he would say when he returned to bed filled with warm soup and ap- 's tragedy with agon- ation; her first misgivings, and her final terror at the cataclysm which fol- lowed. But she knew t she would never really be certain of Mr. Lewis’ moves previous to his standing at her door and saying, “I just lighted a match and everything went black. VER since I married Mrs. Lewis, I have never seen her so stubb about anything as she She insisted that I wa and when she gets so set on anything, | usually try to humor her. So I climbed out of bed, went dc irs to the kitchen, and, of course, found the ma zine which she had left opened on top of the refrigerator. One page carried a corset model along with an advertise- ment of a patent medicine. I guessed that it was the other pa which Mrs. Lewis intended me to read. On the other page, I found a pi of a man cookir dressed in paiamas, that it was pretty well done but not worth having gotten out of bed at twelve o'clock for, when [ saw that the dish the man was fixing was soup. I guess it was the word soup that actually gave me the idea. T supposed that Mrs. Lewis kept a can- opener somewhere about, but just where she hid it in the old kitchen, I can’t say even to this day. I couldn't find it in the silver drawer. It wasn't in the refriger- ator nor anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the stove. I hate to admit it, but I looked even in the washing ma- chine and the dumb-waiter although I had no definite hope, even at the time, of finding it in either place. I just wanted to keep looking, I suppose, and I didn’t want to go to Mrs. Lewis and frankly explain my troubles because I kept thinking how self-sufficient the fel- low in the advertisement seemed. I went back to look at him again. He 18 as that ni: hungry Ws ture thing. He was and I was thinking wasn’t having a hard time at all; he was just’ smiling and going about things. Well, there was one thing: if I couldn't find a can-opener, I would get into the can somehow, I had an idea then. [ knew how to get into things with my mmer and file, and [I did know where they were. Putting the can on the dish rack while I tried to open it, was a mist I realized that while I was sitting on the floor under the sink. Still, it was just one of those things that couldn't be helped, and there was a little comfort in feeling that the fellow in the advertise- ment wouldn't have known in advance that the file would slip and rip up a large section of the sink’s enamel. I didn’t mind so much having hit my hand with the hammer, because the gash in the sink seemed so irreparable and I was worrying about what Mrs. Lewis would say when she saw it in the morning. I couldn't blame it on the cat the way [ did the goldfish business. But I kept telling myself that there must be people who could replace chipped enamel: peo- ple, even, who specialized in it and spent their lives doing that sort of work. I guess T was still worrying about the enamel when the file slipped again and struck the water pipe. But at last the file broke through the top of the can and there was a mild geyser of soup, but by then I was so warmed up that [ didn’t mind especially. While I was sitting on the floor sur- rounded by a piece of shelf and consid- erable tinware, I tried to find some rea- son for Mrs. Lewis’ having kept such heavy pots and pans on so weak a shelf, But I didn’t have time to worry about a broken shelf at twelve-thirty in the morning. The soup looked cold and insufficient in the center of the dishpan, and since I was certain that it was too small a mess of soup to come as the result of so much labor and from so sturdy a can, I shook the tin and found that there was a quantity of soup which refused to come out through the hole in the top. I decided to make a hole im the bottom to provide a sort of two-way drain. So I propped the can against the pipe, put the file through the hole in the top, and started to hammer again, I did have considerable difficulty, but the new hole drained very well as I could tell by the trail of soup from beneath the sink to the pan on the stove, I didn’t have long to enjoy my victory, though, because T heard a hissing sound and then found comicbooks.com thor pen it ii out ruc sitt in squ Mr wo 10} su