With all her appreciation, Dolores’ heart grew heavy. Gone was her hope in the quiet distinction of her felt sailor hat, gone her assurance that the advertisement was the sign-board of Fate. Closer to the wall she shrank when, at precisely half-after-ten, Vincent Seff entered the room.
CHAPTER IV
There was no mistaking him. None less than the owner of the shop would enter with that assured step, and glance among them with that odd mixture of aesthetic distaste, yet business interest. His manner announced that they were “goods” to him.
Seff was a man of certain attractions, somewhere in the later thirties. Clothed in semi-belted homespun, his lines were so defined as to suggest stays beneath. He was of medium height, clean-shaved and almost pallid of face. His brown hair he wore somewhat tousled, probably to hide its scantiness over the crown.
By the time he had reached the center of the room, the girls had straightened and begun to smile and chatter—all, perhaps, except Dolores Trent. She watched him with the detached interest of her dead hope.
Halting, he threw up his delicate hands in an affectation of bewilderment.
“Oh, my dears!” he exclaimed, but in a voice lacking animation. “I shouldn’t have believed there was so much innocence in Gotham. Really, I am all but overcome.”
Despite the assertion, his eyes swept this corner and that.
“Would that I needed an army of innocents instead of the one superlative!” He stepped to the open door on the right. “Mrs. Hutton!” There was a click in his voice.
“Kindly be my board of elimination, Mary,” he instructed the handsome, white-haired woman who responded. “This galaxy of guilelessness is too much for little Vin. My alleged discrimination is blinded, my business shrewdness reels, my senses—— Yes, yes, I know that the lord of lingerie shouldn’t have ’em, senses. But what can a mere man do?” He laid one arm about her shoulders and leaned against her, as if for support.