The scene within the back room of the bath-set impressed John like a
still on a film which had been full of action. First glance might have
convinced a superficial person that intrusion was a mistake, but the
financier was not limited to first glances.
Leaning against the farther wall, her apparel reduced to the flimsiest
of the samples on recent display, stood the manikin. Both her arms were
upraised. Both hands clasped the shoulders of Seff.
John glanced away; looked again; saw other things.
The girl was straining to push away the shopman, not to draw him to
her. In her eyes, uplifted at the crashing of the door, was pictured
the terror which had sounded in her cry. Her face was white as
frost--looked the whiter for a mark, shaped after the imprint of teeth,
which was reddening in the flesh of her cheek.
Self’s one arm wrapped her body tightly. His other hand was entangled
in her flimsy garment at the breast. His face, also turned toward
the door, shuddered with an absorbed, strange look between hope and
hopelessness.
John Cabot stood on the threshold, held by astonishment. He had heard
that high prices oft times were exacted of shopgirls, as of aspirants
for the stage. But this situation would have seemed incredible except
that there it was before his eyes. He felt a demand for initiative.
In that scant moment of hesitation, the pros and cons of the issue, as
concerned himself, flashed through his mind. The principles in this
behind-the-scenes passion play were not of his class, or so Catherine
would have said. Both were total strangers to him, therefore their
relationship not his affair. More or less undesirable notoriety must
result from interference--the inevitable complement? to the Cabot
millions.
However, just as he knew himself not to be a number of things which
Catherine would have wished him to be, he was one thing in particular
which she did not wish him to be. There had been many times when,
frankly, he had congratulated himself on having been a human being long
before a multi-millionaire.
Through the space which he had vacated in the doorway flocked a covey
of fashion’s vultures. His audience formed as he crossed the room and
laid a golf-hardened grip upon Seff’s shoulder. There was an instant of
resistance. Then he tore the man away from the cowering girl.
Almost was he tripped to a fall. Glancing down, he noted a silken swirl
upon the floor. His first act, after throwing aside the drink-maddened
roué, was to gather up the negligee last shown outside and lay it about
the model’s shoulders.
He faced around to meet Seff’s thick-lipped threats.
“Wha--what do you mean? You’ll answer to me for your interference and
before you’re a minute older.”
The shopman chopped out at him recklessly, landing several blows.
Taller than Seff by half a head, superbly fit in comparison, John stood
as if stricken by sudden inability. His eyes were upon the scandalized
throng that had crowded into the room, rather than his opponent. He
protected himself in a confused, inadequate way from a succession of
attacks. The while he was considering a plan to spare the girl odium
and involve her tormentor.
Evidently elated by the success of his tactics, Seff paused for
emphasis.
“What d’you mean butting into my affairs?” he demanded.
“This,” answered John.
With the word, he sent his right fist to a particular spot in the
aesthetic’s neck.
The effect was startling. Seff’s head lopped, his eyes rolled, his body
wavered and stretched its length upon the floor.
Fright-cries rose from the crush about the door; above them, a shrill
demand in Catherine’s voice.
“John, are you mad?”
The first person to reach the prone figure was, however, without
utterance. An equivocal look of dread and triumph was on Mary Hutton’s
face as she knelt beside the man who was her employer and more; raised
his head to her knee; held a bottle of smelling salts to his nose.
John Cabot’s attention returned to the cause of the bout.
She had wrapped the negligee closely around her and stood awaiting
developments with dilated eyes--the model. On her cheek the mark of
teeth showed redder than before. At his glance, she took a forward
step, as if to thank him, then, embarrassed by the press of people
around the door, stopped.
Without words, they two regarded only each other. Quite still they
stood, looking.
And as they looked, comrade spirits seemed to become visible in the
glow of an incipient understanding. Beside her--faded in until to John
it became as plain as her body--appeared a vision of loveliness and
lure. Shy, yet unafraid, this vision beckoned him. From eyes bluer than
the troubled deeps of the girl’s gaze, it smiled on him. With hair
golden as the dreams of a child and tenuous as woman’s wiles, it awoke
in him a thrill like that on seeing the home-land banner in foreign
climes.
The while, in imagination, he heard the _Spring Song_ of Mendelssohn,
vaguely passionate, played by the pure-yearning notes of a flute.
The fragrance that accompanies the aspirations of youth filled his
nostrils. A thought of apple-blossoms hurt his mind with midsummer
weariness.
From his heart, as if aroused by its increasing beat, uprose response
to the vision. Not as if born of the moment--rather as if long
protected from impious eyes--an emotion new to him seemed to take
form. He felt that the girl, as well as he, must see and recognize.
Cruel with tenderness, eager with fear, the emotion that had arisen
from his heart-beats passed, like a gallant shape, from him to her. In
command that was, in truth, but a prayer, it faced the comrade soul of
her.
For a moment and an age, the eyes of the financier and those of the
shopgirl met and held, each pair the other. Met also, in that age of
moment’s length, the lad Amor, a creature of the spirit whose first
desire is to have and to hold, with Innocentia, one not more to cherish
than to fear.
A low-voiced, fragmentary conversation recalled John to the more
material present.
“You, Mary?”
“Who else? At your worst I wouldn’t dare to desert you.”
“Any more than I would you. If you hadn’t poured me so much of----
Anyhow I’ve done what you said I couldn’t do--put over a sweatshop fake
that----”
“Hush, Vin. Come, get up.”
Turning, John saw Mrs. Hutton steady Seff to his feet.
An imperative voice at his own elbow advised: “Better come with me at
once, John, unless you wish to get into the newspapers.”
“That is just what I do wish, Catherine,” he said.
“But as the protector of this latest _Inconnue_?”
“Unknown?” John glanced at his wife surprisedly, then on to the wall
against which the manikin had stood.
Gone was the luring vision which his mother had taught him to believe
was the soul of womanhood. Gone also the girl.
His sense of loss must have shown in his face.
“Why not play Don Quixote for some one more ambitious?” Catherine
gibed. “Ask me to nominate them--as your wife I could choose the
subjects with regard to the family honor and glory. I tell you there
are reporters in that crowd. Once they recognize you----”
“Reporters?” He took a step toward the crush. “Publicity--that’s the
cure for this scourge. Where are they?”
“But, John----” The wife who never could decide whether she disapproved
or admired her husband the more, remembered in the emergency to be
guileful. “Would you crush the victim to cure the scourge? Shouldn’t
chivalry protect the good name of that girl? At least, she is young.”
“And pure as a white violet. For once you are right. Excuse me a
moment. I must find a telephone.”
He strode away.
“Mule and mad, at that--a mad mule!”
The finality of Catherine’s thought-tribute returned her to her own
predicament. Her shrug redraped about her shoulders the satin-smooth
mantle of her social superiority. There was a chance that she might
escape inclusion in whatever notoriety should ensue. Did not a woman
and a mother--the occasion evoked a thought of Jackie--owe her first
duty to herself? Let John take the consequences of his mania for
reform, even to being advertised as loitering alone at the lingerie
show!
Directly upon the decision to detach herself from possibly unpleasant
consequences, she skimmed the edge of the crowd and left the store.
When John Cabot returned to the stage he saw that Seff already was
surrounded by the reporters. Mrs. Hutton stood at his elbow, a bottle
from which she evidently had poured some sort of restorative in one
hand, an emptied glass in the other.
The shopman looked distressed, either by the dose pressed upon him
or by his recent experience--perhaps by both. He was speaking with
something of the fluency of his recent “speech,” the while adjusting
his delicately-toned tie and brushing from one sleeve a reminder of his
fall.
“I am Vincent Seff, owner of this establishment. A slight
misunderstanding occurred inside, yes. But I have a hope that you good
people, also guests at my entertainment, will respect my hospitality
enough to withhold its unfortunate _finale_ from your papers.”
The press representatives, three women and a lone man, looked dubious
at this hypothetical claim. A second man, tilted in a chair against
the wall, who was in the act of finishing a creditable sketch of the
manikin, lifted to Cabot a companionable grin.
“Good, ain’t it?”
“Yes, it is. What will you take for it?”
“What will I take?” The grin broadened. “Why, a better art job than the
one I’ve got.”
“Unfortunately I can’t pay that.”
“Sorry not to oblige an admirer of my work.” The artist banged down
the forelegs of the tilted chair and gathered up his paraphernalia for
departure. “If it’s your nice little idea to keep the girl’s picture
out of the paper, it wouldn’t help any to withhold this. The camera
gang departed on the run some time ago.”
Seff, at Mrs. Hutton’s touch on his arm, had turned and seen the
addition to their group. He continued in urgent tones:
“Of course you must write your stories right, boys and girls. But I do
wish you’d go light on this finish. For the sake of a highly valued
patron, I should regret to have a certain name figured. Also, it
scarcely seems fair to jeopard the chances of an overly impulsive young
girl, just at her start of life.”
“But her scream, Mr. Seff?”
“And the door-smashing?”
“Not to mention that lively bout?”
The trio of women scribes prodded him, as though satellites of the
sport instead of fashion page.
The dapper designer plunged.
“I admit that there was a small fracas, but it was due entirely to
a misunderstanding. It is all patched up now, therefore not worth
mentioning. For once I was at fault in my choice of an employee. You
will agree, I am sure, that my little attempt at an artistic display
would not have carried an evil suggestion to the clean minds for whose
pleasure and profit it was planned. I scarcely know how to express
myself, friends. Do try to appreciate my position.”
He glanced, as if for helpful suggestion, toward Mary Hutton, then went
on, evidently planning his defense in its delivery.
“The poor girl was hysterical from nervous strain over her first public
appearance. She could not have intended to give such rein to her
impulses as--as---- Of course, a woman who will exhibit herself in such
a rôle is not exactly---- Well, I’ll not go into that. But I owe it to
myself to say that even I, experienced at judging women by their face
values, would not have believed our guileless-looking Dolores Trent
capable of a deliberate attempt to compromise an employer who----”
“_Cad!_”
At the interruption, Seff took a backward step, evidently remembering
the reach and force of the speaker’s punch.
John Cabot, with a frown, stayed the three women and lone man who,
having been given the all-important name of the woman in the case, were
on the point of taking wing.
“Best give a minute,” he advised. “You haven’t got the real story
yet. This sale is a fake. The goods were manufactured in Seff’s
own sweatshops right here in New York. The money was taken under
false pretenses. I am not in position to state just how usual among
supposedly high-class shops is the sort of indelicacy we’ve witnessed
this morning. Fortunately, however, I am able to make an example of
this instance. I am John Cabot. I ask you to investigate.”
“I have heard enough of this contemptible attack, no matter who or
what you are.” Seff hurled himself into the breach as bravely as his
condition would permit. “Nothing but respect for the feelings of
your wife has kept me from having you ejected before this. You cannot
influence the newspapers against us. We are, as you should know,
persistent advertisers. I ask you now to go quietly and at once, before
I----”
For a moment it seemed that his advice had been accepted. John Cabot
turned and crossed to the rim of the stage. There he lifted his hand to
the lingering society contingent.
“I have sent for the police,” he said. “They’ll be here any minute now.
They have a habit, I’m told, of taking the names of eye-witnesses.
Subpoenas generally arrive at elsewhere-essential moments, so I’d
suggest that such of you as have any important engagements for the near
future----”
He had said enough. The remaining “valued patrons” broke the leash of
curiosity and hurried away after the example of the “thoroughbred” Mrs.
Cabot. Be it added that they waited not for the elevator, nor counted
the steps in the flight of their descent.
For diverse reasons, a group remained with John Cabot during his brief
wait for the detectives of the nearby Tenderloin police station. The
reporters stayed because of the “realer” crux of the story explaining
the scream of a shopgirl; Mrs. Hutton because, as she had asserted, she
dared not desert Seff; the owner himself because of the competent look
of a golf-steeled right, swinging from an arm whose length and strength
he knew.
The while, Seff gained considerable reassurance from a _sotto voce_
consultation with his forewoman who, in the emergency, seemed to have
reversed the usual relationship of employed to employer. He greeted
the officers as though they had come at his request and asked that
they search the store for the model. She, although the cause of the
disturbance, would be needed, he declared, as his chief witness.
Upon the report that no trace of her could be found, he addressed
himself to the financier with a noticeable cessation of resentment.
The girl was gone, he pointed. That fact was substantial evidence
of her guilty intent toward himself. No real harm had been done and
nothing would be gained by going through with his arrest on a charge
that could not be proved. Certainly, with their combined influence, the
unpleasant aftermath of what so many had voted a pleasant morning could
be kept from the papers. Had Mr. Cabot no thought for the consequence
of the use of his name in such a connection? Even though he cared
nothing for his own reputation, did he not owe something to his family?
Sentiment aside, with no complaining witness what could he gain to
equal what he should lose by carrying out his threat?
“But there is a complainant,” John assured him pleasantly enough. “That
rôle is mine.”
“_You?_ Can you possibly intend----”
Mrs. Hutton it was who found voice for direct demand. “What is the
charge? We have a right to know, sir.”
“Assault.” John Cabot directly faced the shopman. Humor twitched his
mouth as he asked: “Did you think I let you hit me for my own selfish
pleasure?”
As the motor patrol purred its way to the station house, however, the
amusement faded from his face. The Fall air whipped his longing for
the gentler zephyrs of Spring, for the breath of apple-blooms, for the
sound of a flute playing Mendelssohn’s vaguely passionate theme.
He forced himself back to certain troubleful questions of the moment.
The manikin, Dolores Trent--what of her? The very strength of his
desire to find her advised that he should not look for her. Why favor
himself as a trailer, while jailing Seff? But where would she hide
herself--what do?