“Thank you kindly,” she said. “My boss wrote me two special-delivery letters yesterday to say that I was doing far the best stuff that was coming up out of Redfield—far. He said that the three clippings that I sent him of your stuff showed promise—he did, honestly. . . . I think that soup’s terrible, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to stay up as late as I pleased without anyone sending me to bed. I’m mad about it. . . . Have some peanuts?”
“No, thanks,” said the reporter, rising abruptly. “Anything I can get you outside?”
“You’re cross!” wailed the red-headed girl, her eyes round with panic and contrition. “You are—you are—you’re absolutely furious. Wait, please—please, or I’ll hang on to your coat tails and make a scene. The real reason I don’t go out and get soup is because I don’t dare. If I went away even for a minute, something might happen, and then I wouldn’t ever sleep again. Someone might get my seat—didn’t you see that fat, sinful-looking old lady who got the Gazette girl’s place yesterday? She wouldn’t go even when three officers and the sheriff told her she had to, and the Gazette girl had to sit on a stool in the gallery, and she said she had such a rushing of rage in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything that anyone said all afternoon. So, you see—— And I would like a ham sandwich and I think that you write better than Conrad, and I apologize, and if you’ll tell me who did the murder, I’ll tell you. And please hurry, because I hope you won’t be gone long.”
“You’re a nice little nut,” said the reporter, and he beamed on her forgivingly, “and I like you. I like the way your nose turns up and your mouth turns down, and I like that funny little hat you wear. . . . I’ll make it in two jumps. Watch me!”
The red-headed girl watched him obediently, her face pink and her eyes bright under the funny little hat. When the door opened to let him out, she plunged her eyes apprehensively for a moment into the silent, pushing, heaving mob behind the policeman’s broad blue shoulders, shivered, and turned them resolutely away.
“If I were convicted of murder to-morrow,” thought the red-headed girl passionately, “they’d shove just like that to see me hanged. Ugh! What’s the matter with us?”
She eyed with an expression of profound distaste the plump lady just beyond her, conscientiously eating stuffed eggs out of a shoe box. So smug, so virtuous, so pompadoured and lynx-eyed—— Her eyes moved hastily on to the pair of giggling flappers exchanging powder puffs and anecdotes over a box of maple caramels; on to the round-shouldered youth with the unattractive complexion and unpleasant tie; on to the pretty thing with overflushed cheeks and overbright eyes above her sable scarf and beneath her Paris hat. The red-headed girl wrenched her eyes back to the empty space where there sat, tranquil and aloof, the memory of the prisoner at the bar.
It was good to be able to forget those hot, hungry, cruel faces, so sleek and safe and triumphant, and to remember that other face under the shadow of the small felt hat, cool and controlled and gay—yes, gay, for all the shadows that beset it. Only—what thoughts were weaving behind that bright brow, those steady lips? Thoughts of terror, of remorse, of bitterness and horror and despair? If you were strong enough to strike down a laughing girl who barred your path, you would be strong enough to keep your lips steady, wouldn’t you?
The red-headed girl stared about her wildly; she felt suddenly small and cold and terrified. Where was the reporter? What a long time—— Oh, someone had opened a window. It was only the wind of autumn that was blowing so cold then, not the wind of death. What was it those little newsboys were calling outside, yelping like puppies in the gray square?
“Extra Extra! All about the mysterious——”