"That's what you always tell me."
"He ain't never in."
"Very well," said Joan sweetly: "I'll wait."
The boy started to say something pointed, hesitated, regarded her with
dull suspicion, and suddenly enquired:
"Whaja wanna see 'm 'bout?"
"A matter of private business."
"Ah," drawled the boy with infinite disgust, "tha's what they all say!"
An embittered grimace shaped upon his soiled face. "Lis'n!" he said,
almost affably--"if yuh'll think up a good one, I'll fetch this inta his
sec't'ry. Now cud anythin' be fairer 'n that?"
"I'll go you," Joan retorted, falling in with his spirit. "Tell him a
friend of Mr. Marbridge's wants to see him."
She esteemed this a rather brilliant bit of diplomacy, and at the same
time considered herself stupid not to have thought of it before. But it
failed to move the office-boy. His head signalled a negative.
"Havta do better'n that," he announced. "If I fell for ev'ry wren what
claims she's a nintimate frien' of Mista Marbridge--"
"But I am a friend of his--truly I am!" Joan insisted warmly.
The boy rammed a hand into a trouser's-pocket. "Betcha--" he began; but
reconsidered. "Yuh never can tell 'bout a skirt," he reminded himself
audibly. "But, jus' to prove I'm a sport, I'll go yuh."
Motioning Joan through the door of the reception room, he shambled off
with an air of questioning his own sanity.
The reception room was perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen wide: an
interior room, lighted, and none too well, by electricity, ventilated,
when at all, through the doorways of adjoining offices. A row of
cane-seated chairs was aligned against the inner wall. In the middle of
the floor stood a broad and substantial table of oak; it was absolutely
bare. Here and there a few unhappy lithographs, yellowing "life-size"
photographs of dead or otherwise extinguished stars, and a framed
play-bill or two of Arlington's earlier ventures, decorated the dingy
drab wall. There was no floor-covering of any description.
In this room herded some two-score people of the stage, waiting
hopefully for interviews that were, as a rule, granted to not more than
one applicant in ten: a heterogeneous assemblage, owning a single
characteristic in common: whenever, at the far end of the room, the
door opened leading to the offices of the management, every head turned
that way, and every voice was hushed in reverence.
Yet it was seldom that the door disclosed anything more unique than a
second office-boy, even more dejected than the first, who, peering
through, would, after examining the card in his hand for the name of the
applicant, painfully recite some stereotyped phrase worn smooth--"Mista
Brown? Y'ur party says t' come back next week!" "Miss Holman? Y'ur
party's went out 'n' won't be back th'safternoon!" "Miss Em'rson? Mista
Arlington says ever'thin's full up just'present. Call 'n ag'in!" or more
infrequently: "Mista Grayson's t' step in, please...."
Joan found a vacant chair.
She had no hope whatever of being admitted to the Presence, despite the
unexpected condescension of the office-boy. Marbridge's name might prove
the Open Sesame; but she doubted that vaguely: "it wouldn't be her if
_that_ happened!"
The atmosphere was stifling with heat complicated by stale human breath
and the reek of perfumery, all stratified with layers of tobacco smoke
which entered over the transoms of the communicating offices. Above the
muted murmurings of the unemployed's apprehensive voices could be heard
the brisk chattering of two or three type-writing machines; and
telephone bells rang incessantly, near and far, one taking up the tune
as soon as another ended. The throng of applicants shuffled their feet
uneasily, expectantly, morosely.
Joan was so uncomfortable and oppressed that she was tempted to rise and
go without waiting for the discounted answer. Only dread of encountering
Quard restrained her. The longer she delayed, the slighter the chance of
finding him still in front of the theatre....
Her thoughts drifted into reverie dully coloured with misgivings. She
thought of Charlie Quard as a bird of ill-omen whose appearance could
presage nothing but suffering and disaster; ignoring altogether the
truth, that through his good offices alone, however tainted with
self-interest, she had been suffered to enter into the profession whose
ranks she had elected to adorn; with that other truth, that she owed him
for the clothing she wore, the food she ate, the very roof that
sheltered her--and meant never to repay....
The voice of the second office-boy chanted her name twice before she
heard it.
"Miss Thursd'y?... Miss Joan Thursd'y?"
Joan started to her feet.
"Yes--?"
"Th' party you ast for says please t' step this way!"