Guernsey shrugged.
"I'm not a pretty girl," he replied.
He left the office, and Miss Henderson looked Clancy over critically.
"Better call it a day, my dear, and run over to Forty-fifth Street and see my dressmaker. I'll 'phone her while you're on the way. Put yourself entirely in her hands, and I'll attend to the bill. Only—you promise to stay three months?"
"I promise," said Clancy.
Sally Henderson laughed.
"Then run along. Miss Conover. Jennie Conover. Number Sixty-three A West Forty-fifth. Take whatever she chooses for you. Good-by."
Clancy was crossing Fifth Avenue a moment later. She was as dazed as she'd been when Morris Beiner had made the engagement with Hildebloom, of the Rosebush studios. This amazing town, where some starved and others walked into fortune! This wondrous city that, when it smiled, smiled most wondrously, and, when it frowned, frowned most horrendously! But yesterday it had pursued her, threatened her with starvation, perhaps. The day before, it had promised her fame and fortune. To-day, it promised her, if neither fame nor fortune, at least more immediate money than she had ever earned in her life, and a chance for success that, while not dazzling, yet might be more permanent than anything that the stage could offer her.
She felt more safe, too, now that she had met one of the players in Zenda's poker game. Doubtless she could meet any of the rest of them, except Zenda himself, and escape recognition. The town no longer seemed small to her; it seemed vast again. It was quite improbable that she would ever again run across any of those few Broadwayites who knew her. At any rate, sufficient time would have elapsed for the real murderer of Morris Beiner to have been apprehended. Up to now, oddly enough, she had not devoted much thought to the possible identity of the murderer. She had been too greatly concerned with her own peril, with the new interests that despite the peril, were so engrossing. Her meeting with Randall, her acquaintance with Sophie Carey, her new position—these had occupied most of her thoughts of the last twenty-four hours. Before that, for eight hours or so, she had been concerned with her danger. That danger had revived momentarily this afternoon; it had died away almost immediately. But the only way to remove the cause of the danger was to discover the identity of the person who had killed Morris Beiner.
She drew a deep breath. She couldn't do any investigating, even if she knew how, without subjecting herself to great risk. Still— She refused to think about the matter. Which is exactly what youth always does; it will not face the disagreeable, the threatening. And who shall say that it is not more sensible in this than age, which, knowing life's inevitability of act and consequence, is without hope?