“And,” she wailed, “I’m hungry and we don’t know where the ship is and I’ve got to sit down and—and go someplace.”
“So do I,” Bernie said weakly.
So did Ross. He said, “Let’s just go into this restaurant. I know we have no money—don’t nag me please, Helena. We’ll order, eat, not pay, and get arrested.” He held up his hand at the protests. “I said, get arrested. The smartest thing we could do. Obviously somebody’s running this place—and it’s not the stoops we’ve seen. The quickest way I know of to get to whoever’s in charge is to get in trouble. And once they see us we can explain everything.”
It made sense to them. Unfortunately the first restaurant they tried was coin-operated—from the front door on. So were the second to seventh. Ross tried to talk Bernie into slugging a pedestrian so they could all be jugged for disturbing the peace, but failed.
Helena noted at last that the women’s wear shops had live attendants who, presumably, would object to trouble. They marched into one of the gaudy places, each took a dress from a rack and methodically tore them to pieces.
A saleslady approached them dithering and asked tremulously: “What for did you do that? Din’t you like the dresses?”
“Well yes, very much,” Helena began apologetically. “But you see, the fact is——”
“Shuddup!” Ross told her. He said to the saleslady: “No. We hated them. We hate every dress here. We’re going to tear up every dress in the place. Why don’t you call the police?”
“Oh,” she said vaguely. “All right,” and vanished into the rear of the store. She returned after a minute and said, “He wants to know your names.”
“Just say ‘three desperate strangers,’” Ross told her.