“Are you an officer of the law? Is it your business to take care of strangers?”
“Why, yes. I suppose so.”
“Can I trust you? Somebody must direct me. I was to take a cab and go—to this address. But I don’t know what a cab is from any other sort of wagon. Will you help me?”
“Certainly. Give me the card.”
Margot handed him the paper with the address of the old friend with whom her uncle wished her to stop while she was in the city; but the moment the policeman looked at it his face fell.
“Why, there isn’t any such place, now. All them houses has been torn down to put up a sky-scraper. They were torn down six months ago.”
“Why, how can that be? This lady has lived in that house all her life, my uncle said. She is a widow, very gentle and refined: she was quite poor; though once she had plenty of money. She took boarders, to keep a roof over her head; and it isn’t at all likely that she would tear it down and so destroy her only income. You must be mistaken. Won’t you ask somebody else, who knows more about the city, please?”
The officer bridled, and puffed out his mighty chest. Was not he “one of the finest”? as the picked policemen are termed. If he didn’t know the streets of the metropolis, who did?
Margot saw that she had made a serious mistake. Her head turned giddy, the crowd seemed to surge and close about her, and with a sense of utter failure and homesickness she fainted away.