Philo Vance - Landlord and Tenant

I suppose you might say the seeds of our trouble were planted long ago, but they took a long time in blooming.

It began one Friday afternoon.

I came home from the shop, my arms loaded down with a high-fidelity amplifier I'd built and a brand-new loudspeaker.

I started up the stairs to our second-floor apartment when suddenly...

Oh, God, it's that blasted stair.

You fell down?

No, Joe, I always do this when I come upstairs.

Keeps me in

trim.

Did you hurt yourself, Eve? I don't know yet.

All the precincts haven't reported.

But what happened? You know doggone well what happened, Joe.

Look at the carpeting on that stair.

Any wonder I

went down? Oh, yeah, so it is.

I'm sorry, Eve.

I should fix that right away.

Oh, why don't you wait

a while, Joe? Next time it might kill me.

Oh, now, you don't have to get nasty about it, Ev.

I told you I'm sorry and I'll attend to it.

Yeah, you'll attend to it like you attend to everything else in this

three-story rat trap of yours.

The heat, the hot water.

Yeah, and that crummy sink of ours upstairs.