The Little Warrior Part 33

"Only one. Jack his name is."

"... But he isn't the right man. It's absurd. Major Selby wrote to me from this address. This _is_ Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?"

"This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street," conceded the other cautiously.

"I've got his letter here." She opened her bag, and gave an exclamation of dismay. "It's gone!"

"Mr Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last Fall. A Mr Robertson. Dark-complected man with a mustache."

"I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back.

I must have dropped it."

"There's a Mr Rainsby on the seventh floor. He's a broker down on Wall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech."

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

"Never mind," she said. "I must have made a mistake. I was quite sure that this was the address, but it evidently isn't. Thank you so much.

I'm so sorry to have bothered you."

She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points west speechless: for people who said "Thank you so much" to him were even rarer than those who said "please." He followed her with an affectionate eye till she was out of sight, then, restoring his chewing-gum to circulation, returned to the perusal of his paper. A momentary suggestion presented itself to his mind that what Jill had really wanted was Mr Willoughby on the eighth floor, but it was too late to say so now: and soon, becoming absorbed in the narrative of a spirited householder in Kansas who had run amuck with a hatchet and slain six, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

3.

Jill walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her way thoughtfully along the breezy street which, flanked on one side by the Park and on the other by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and the apartment houses of the wealthy, ends in the humbler and more democratic s.p.a.ces of Columbus Circle. She perceived that she was in that position, familiar to melodrama, of being alone in a great city.

The reflection brought with it a certain discomfort. The bag that dangled from her wrist contained all the money she had in the world, the very broken remains of the twenty dollars which Uncle Chris had sent her at Brookport. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and no immediately obvious means of adding to her capital. It was a situation which she had not foreseen when she set out to walk to Brookport station.

She pondered over the mystery of Uncle Chris' disappearance, and found no solution. The thing was inexplicable. She was as sure of the address he had given in his letter as she was of anything in the world. Yet at that address nothing had been heard of him. His name was not even known. These were deeper waters than Jill was able to fathom.

She walked on, aimlessly. Presently she came to Columbus Circle, and, crossing Broadway at the point where that street breaks out into an eruption of automobile stores, found herself suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate gla.s.s.

On the other side of this gla.s.s, at marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the pa.s.ser-by. It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the center of the window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples and grape-fruit, a white-robed ministrant at a stove juggled ceaselessly with buckwheat cakes. He struck the final note in the candidness of the establishment, a priest whose ritual contained no mysteries.

Spectators with sufficient time on their hands to permit them to stand and watch were enabled to witness a New York mid-day meal in every stage of its career, from its protoplasmic beginnings as a stream of yellowish-white liquid poured on top of the stove to its ultimate Nirvana in the interior of the luncher in the form of an appetising cake. It was a spectacle which no hungry girl could resist. Jill went in, and, as she made her way among the tables, a voice spoke her name.

"Miss Mariner!"

Jill jumped, and thought for a moment that the thing must have been an hallucination. It was impossible that anybody in the place should have called her name. Except for Uncle Chris, wherever he might be, she knew no one in New York. Then the voice spoke again, competing valiantly with a clatter of crockery so uproarious as to be more like something solid than a mere sound.

"I couldn't believe it was you!"

A girl in blue had risen from the nearest table, and was staring at her in astonishment, Jill recognized her instantly. Those big, pathetic eyes, like a lost child's, were unmistakable. It was the parrot girl, the girl whom she and Freddie Rooke had found in the drawing-room, at Ovington Square that afternoon when the foundations of the world had given way and chaos had begun.

"Good gracious!" cried Jill. "I thought you were in London!"

That feeling of emptiness and panic, the result of her interview with the Guatemalan general at the apartment house, vanished magically.

She sat down at this unexpected friend's table with a light heart.

"Whatever are you doing in New York?" asked the girl. "I never knew you meant to come over."

"It was a little sudden. Still, here I am. And I'm starving. What are those things you're eating?"

"Buckwheat cakes."

"Oh, yes. I remember Uncle Chris talking about them on the boat. I'll have some."

"But when did you come over?"

"I landed about ten days ago. I've been down at a place called Brookport on Long Island. How funny running into you like this!"

"I was surprised that you remembered me."

"I've forgotten your name," admitted Jill frankly. "But that's nothing. I always forget names."

"My name's Nelly Bryant."

"Of course. And you're on the stage, aren't you?"

"Yes. I've just got work with Goble and Cohn... . Hullo, Phil!"

A young man with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back from his forehead had paused at the table on his way to the cashier's desk.

"h.e.l.lo, Nelly."

"I didn't know you lunched here."

"Don't often. Been rehearsing with Joe up at the Century Roof, and had a quarter of an hour to get a bite. Can I sit down?"

"Sure. This is my friend, Miss Mariner."

The young man shook hands with Jill, flashing an approving glance at her out of his dark, restless eyes.

"Pleased to meet you."

"This is Phil Brown," said Nelly. "He plays the straight for Joe Widgeon. They're the best jazz-and-hok.u.m team on the Keith Circuit."

"Oh, hush!" said Mr Brown modestly. "You always were a great little booster, Nelly."

"Well, you know you are! Weren't you held over at the Palace last time! Well, then!"

"That's true," admitted the young man. "Maybe we didn't gool 'em, eh?

Stop me on the street and ask me! Only eighteen bows second house Sat.u.r.day!"

Jill was listening, fascinated.

"I can't understand a word," she said. "It's like another language."

"You're from the other side, aren't you?" asked Mr Brown.

"She only landed a week ago," said Nelly.