“Millions of people,” she said, “swarming
like rats, chattering like apes, smelling like all
hell ... monkeys! Or lice, I suppose. For
one really exquisite palace ... on Long Island, say—or
even in Greenwich ... for one palace full of pictures
from the Old World and exquisite things—with
avenues of trees and green lawns and a view of the
blue sea, and lovely people about in slick dresses
... I’d sacrifice a hundred thousand of
them, a million of them.” She raised her
hand feebly and snapped her fingers. “I
care nothing for them—understand me?”
The look she bent upon Miss McGovern at the conclusion
of this speech was curiously elfin, curiously intent.
Then she gave a short little laugh polished with scorn,
and tumbling backward fell off again to sleep.
Miss McGovern was bewildered. She wondered what
were the hundred thousand things that Mrs. Patch would
sacrifice for her palace. Dollars, she supposed—yet
it had not sounded exactly like dollars.
It was February, seven days before her birthday, and
the great snow that had filled up the cross-streets
as dirt fills the cracks in a floor had turned to
slush and was being escorted to the gutters by the
hoses of the street-cleaning department. The
wind, none the less bitter for being casual, whipped
in through the open windows of the living room bearing
with it the dismal secrets of the areaway and clearing
the Patch apartment of stale smoke in its cheerless
circulation.
Gloria, wrapped in a warm kimona, came into the chilly
room and taking up the telephone receiver called Joseph
Bloeckman.
“Do you mean Mr. Joseph Black?”
demanded the telephone girl at “Films Par Excellence.”
“Bloeckman, Joseph Bloeckman. B-l-o—”
“Mr. Joseph Bloeckman has changed his name to
Black. Do you want him?”
“Why—yes.” She remembered
nervously that she had once called him “Blockhead”
to his face.
His office was reached by courtesy of two additional
female voices; the last was a secretary who took her
name. Only with the flow through the transmitter
of his own familiar but faintly impersonal tone did
she realize that it had been three years since they
had met. And he had changed his name to Black.
“Can you see me?” she suggested lightly.
“It’s on a business matter, really.
I’m going into the movies at last—if
I can.”
“I’m awfully glad. I’ve always
thought you’d like it.”
“Do you think you can get me a trial?”
she demanded with the arrogance peculiar to all beautiful
women, to all women who have ever at any time considered
themselves beautiful.
He assured her that it was merely a question of when
she wanted the trial. Any time? Well, he’d
phone later in the day and let her know a convenient
hour. The conversation closed with conventional
padding on both sides. Then from three o’clock
to five she sat close to the telephone—with
no result.
