第85章

Soon she came to a bridge over a muddy stream--a little river, she thought at first, then remembered that it must be the canal--the Rhine, as it was called, because the city's huge German population lived beyond it, keeping up the customs and even the language of the fatherland.She stood on the bridge, watching the repulsive waters from which arose the stench of sewage; watching canal boats dragged drearily by mules with harness-worn hides; followed with her melancholy eyes the course of the canal under bridge after bridge, through a lane of dirty, noisy factories pouring out from lofty chimneys immense clouds of black smoke.It ought to have been a bright summer day, but the sun shone palely through the dense clouds; a sticky, sooty moisture saturated the air, formed a skin of oily black ooze over everything exposed to it.A policeman, a big German, with stupid honest face, brutal yet kindly, came lounging along.

"I beg your pardon," said Susan, "but would you mind telling me where--" she had forgotten the address, fumbled in her bosom for the cards, showed him Blynn's card--"how I can get to this?"The policeman nodded as he read the address."Keep on this way, lady"--he pointed his baton south--"until you've passed four streets.At the fifth street turn east.Go one--two--three--four--five streets east.Understand?"

"Yes, thank you," said the girl with the politeness of deep gratitude.

"You'll be at Vine.You'll see the name on the street lamp.

Blynn's on the southwest corner.Think you can find it?""I'm sure I can."

"I'm going that way," continued the policeman.

"But you'd better walk ahead.If you walked with me, they'd think you was pinched--and we'd have a crowd after us." And he laughed with much shaking of his fat, tightly belted body.

Susan contrived to force a smile, though the suggestion of such a disgraceful scene made her shudder."Thank you so much.I'm sure I'll find it." And she hastened on, eager to put distance between herself and that awkward company.

"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 glass 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 knob 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 masses of dirty white furbelows.On her head reared a big hat, above an incredible quantity 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 mass 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."