Part 11 (2/2)
”For the love of hivin,” he thought, ”Thim movie actors will dress like annything for the money--” and glanced about automatically to see the camera man. But something in the terror of the little woman's glance flashed over the crowded crossing to his warm Irish heart, ”Hullo, she's no acterine!” He ploughed through the river of travel and caught at her arm and felt her slight weight sag against him.
”Annybody as turned her loose--” he continued his soliloquy after he'd jollied a newsboy into escorting her across to the Temple Bar Building, ”Ought to be sent up--” He vented his disgust at the ”annybody” on a daring chauffeur and watched until the newsboy came panting back to his stand to nod a triumphant grinning affirmative ”'Nd her head up in the air like a queen--” he held his own head regally to signal the cross-town traffic, ”Queer lot!” and forgot her.
It was noon when she came back to him, looking older and queerer and whiter faced than ever. Temple Bar is a large office building and Felicia Day had tramped courageously from floor to floor, from office to office, persistently seeking the Portia Person. She had been laughed at, had been almost insulted, had been treated with deference and treated with indifference; she had talked with scores and scores of lawyers, looking searchingly into their faces, asking her question firmly and sweetly. She had asked it of busy lawyers, lazy lawyers, suave lawyers, thin lawyers, fat lawyers, rude lawyers, young lawyers, old lawyers; she had talked to dozens of clerks and stenographers, appealed to elevator men, janitors, scrub women, any one who would listen--she wanted to find the Portia Person, he had curly hair and he was quite tall and he had had a client whose name was Octavia, who was pretty and ill and who had given him some papers sixteen years ago. He had talked with Mademoiselle D'Ormy, in a house in Montrose Place. Of this business that she had for him the little woman was extraordinarily canny, it was no one's affair save hers and the Portia Person's.
The patient girl at the news stand in the main hallway looked up and down a list of tenants, checking them off with an over-manicured finger as she tried to suggest. She had taken charge of Felicia's bag, had offered to keep Bab.i.+.c.he. Her good humor shone in a dreary morning.
Felicia began to have faith in her.
”If I was you,” said the girl, ”I'd go get myself a bite to eat. It's noon, everybody's going out--don't you see?”
Felicia saw, she saw also that the patient newsstand girl was tired.
”Do you go to get yourself 'a bite'?” she asked curiously.
”Not till two o'clock,” sighed the girl.
”I wish,” decided Felicia whimsically, ”that Margot had cooked _de_-licious foods for us--broiled chicken and baked potatoes and a caramel custard and that we could go and sit by the Bowling Green and have Bele bring our lunch out on the little folding table--for you have been most kind to me--”
The girl stared after her in amazement.
”Well, I'll be darned!” she announced frankly to the elevator starter, ”that woman is the limit! She's certainly got me guessing! One minute she seems as intelligent as anybody--only she can't remember the name of the man she's looking for--but gee, I forget names myself--and the next minute she's asking me to lunch on Bowling Green, as pleasant as you please! Can you beat it? And I can't for the life of me make out whether she's young or old--her voice's dandy and young. Honest, I like to hear her talk, she talks so comical--but don't she look like the last rose of summer, now don't she?”
The elevator starter agreed that she did and whistled ”She May Have Seen Better Days” till the news-stand girl giggled and told him he was ”Too comical” but they both of them commented about her when she did not return.
”She may be a nut,” admitted the girl, ”But she's kinda got me going.
Gee I'd like to find the lawyer for her just to find out was she Dorothy Arnold come back--or somebody like that.”
It was Officer Brennan who had dissuaded her from her attempt to find the Portia Person. He had spied her, standing undecided outside the office building and hailed her as he was about to go off his beat.
”Did you find what you were looking for?”
His sureness of manner and his uniform impressed her.
”I couldn't find the man I wanted,” she confided, ”so I think I'll just have to see the Judge Person, myself, wouldn't you?”
He cogitated. Did she know what judge she wanted to see?
She unfolded the grimy hand bill, the ”To be sold for unpaid taxes”
that Zeb had brought to her. He read it slowly till he came to the ”Order of Justice Harlow” at the bottom.
”That's an easy one,” he cheered her, ”I'll take you over there right now and put you next to a fellow who works there. He'll slip you through to his Honor himself and you can tell him your troubles.”
But in spite of being ”slipped through” there was a deal of waiting, sometimes in anterooms, sometimes in corridors, a deal of answering the questions of not overly intelligent clerks, and late afternoon found her sitting primly cuddling her restless doggie, waiting for some one to bring the tax records. She was a little tireder, a little hungrier, a little less sure of herself than when the friendly news girl had advised her to ”get a bite.” She was keeping her courage high by thinking over and over to herself,
”After I see the Judge then I'll go to Dudley Hamilt.”
It had not occurred to her that this busy place was a court room. It had no stately panelled walls like those that had been painted in the background of the portrait of Grandy's father. Nor did she understand when she was at last ushered into the Justice's presence that he was the man she had been waiting to see.
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