"Don"t mention it, lady," the policeman called after her, tapping his baton on the rim of his helmet, as a mark of elegant courtesy.
She was not at ease until, looking back, she no longer saw the bluecoat for the intervening crowds. After several slight mistakes in the way, she descried ahead of her a large sign painted on the wall of a three-story brick building:
MAURICE BLYNN, THEATRICAL AGENT ALL KINDS OF TALENT PLACED AND SUPPLIED
After some investigation she discovered back of the saloon which occupied the street floor a grimy and uneven wooden staircase leading to the upper stories. At the first floor she came face to face with a door on the gla.s.s of which was painted the same announcement she had read from the wall. She knocked timidly, then louder. A shrill voice came from the interior:
"The door"s open. Come in."
She turned the k.n.o.b and entered a small, low-ceilinged room whose general grime was streaked here and there with smears of soot. It contained a small wooden table at which sprawled a freckled and undernourished office boy, and a wooden bench where fretted a woman obviously of "the profession." She was dressed in ma.s.ses of dirty white furbelows. On her head reared a big hat, above an incredible quant.i.ty of yellow hair; on the hat were badly put together plumes of badly curled ostrich feathers.
Beneath her skirt was visible one of her feet; it was large and fat, was thrust into a tiny slipper with high heel ending under the arch of the foot. The face of the actress was young and pertly pretty, but worn, overpainted, overpowdered and underwashed. She eyed Susan insolently.
"Want to see the boss?" said the boy.
"If you please," murmured Susan.
"Business?"
"I"m looking for a--for a place."
The boy examined her carefully. "Appointment?"
"No, sir," replied the girl.
"Well--he"ll see you, anyhow," said the boy, rising.
The ma.s.s of plumes and yellow bangs and furbelows on the bench became violently agitated. "I"m first," cried the actress.
"Oh, you sit tight, Mame," jeered the boy. He opened a solid door behind him. Through the crack Susan saw busily writing at a table desk a bald, fat man with a pasty skin and a veined and bulbous nose.
"Lady to see you," said the boy in a tone loud enough for both Susan and the actress to hear.
"Who? What name?" snapped the man, not ceasing or looking up.
"She"s young, and a queen," said the boy. "Shall I show her in?"
"Yep."
The actress started up. "Mr. Blynn----" she began in a loud, threatening, elocutionary voice.
""Lo, Mame," said Blynn, still busy. "No time to see you.
Nothing doing. So long."
"But, Mr. Blynn----"
"Bite it off, Mame," ordered the boy. "Walk in, miss."
Susan, deeply colored from sympathy with the humiliated actress and from nervousness in those forbidding and ominous surroundings, entered the private office. The boy closed the door behind her. The pen scratched on. Presently the man said:
"Well, my dear, what"s your name?"
With the last word, the face lifted and Susan saw a seamed and pitted skin, small pale blue eyes showing the white, or rather the bloodshot yellow all round the iris, a heavy mouth and jaw, thick lips; the lower lip protruded and was decorated with a blue-black spot like a blood boil, as if to indicate where the incessant cigar usually rested. At first glance into Susan"s sweet, young face the small eyes sparkled and danced, traveled on to the curves of her form.
"Do sit down, my dear," said he in a grotesquely wheedling voice. She took the chair close to him as it was the only one in the little room.
"What can I do for you? My, how fresh and pretty you are!"
"Mr. Burlingham----" began Susan.
"Oh--you"re the girl Bob was talking about." He smiled and nodded at her. "No wonder he kept you out of sight." He inventoried her charms again with his sensual, confident glance.
"Bob certainly has got good taste."
"He"s in the hospital," said Susan desperately. "So I"ve come to get a place if you can find me one."
"Hospital? I"m sorry to hear that." And Mr. Blynn"s tones had that accent of deep sympathy which get a man or woman without further evidence credit for being "kind-hearted whatever else he is."
"Yes, he"s very ill--with typhoid," said the girl. "I must do something right away to help him."
"That"s fine--fine," said Mr. Blynn in the same effective tone.
"I see you"re as sweet as you are pretty. Yes--that"s fine--fine!" And the moisture was in the little eyes. "Well, I think I can do something for you. I _must_ do something for you.
Had much experience?--Professional, I mean."
Mr. Blynn laughed at his, to Susan, mysterious joke. Susan smiled faintly in polite response. He rubbed his hands and smacked his lips, the small eyes dancing. The moisture had vanished.
"Oh, yes, I can place you, if you can do anything at all," he went on. "I"d "a" done it long ago, if Bob had let me see you.
But he was too foxy. He ought to be ashamed of himself, standing in the way of your getting on, just out of jealousy. Sing or dance--or both?"
"I can sing a little, I think," said Susan.
"Now, that"s modest. Ever worn tights?"
Susan shook her head, a piteous look in her violet-gray eyes.
"Oh, you"ll soon get used to that. And mighty well you"ll look in "em, I"ll bet, eh? Where did Bob get you? And when?" Before she could answer, he went on, "Let"s see, I"ve got a date for this evening, but I"ll put it off. And she"s a peach, too. So you see what a hit you"ve made with me. We"ll have a nice little dinner at the Hotel du Rhine and talk things over."
"Couldn"t I go to work right away?" asked the girl.
"Sure. I"ll have you put on at Schaumer"s tomorrow night----"
He looked shrewdly, laughingly, at her, with contracted eyelids.
"_If_ everything goes well. Before I do anything for you, I have to see what you can do for me." And he nodded and smacked his lips. "Oh, we"ll have a lovely little dinner!" He looked expectantly at her. "You certainly are a queen! What a dainty little hand!" He reached out one of his hands--puffy as if it had been poisoned, very white, with stubby fingers. Susan reluctantly yielded her hand to his close, mushy embrace. "No rings. That"s a shame, petty----" He was talking as if to a baby.--"That"ll have to be fixed--yes, it will, my little sweetie. My, how nice and fresh you are!" And his great nostrils, repulsively hairy within, deeply pitted without, sniffed as if over an odorous flower.
Susan drew her hand away. "What will they give me?" she asked.
"How greedy it is!" he wheedled. "Well, you"ll get plenty--plenty."
"How much?" said the girl. "Is it a salary?"