So, that’s all. I don’t really know whether I’m a wife or a widow, but I do know that I ought to have a share of that money coming to me, and perhaps if you put the story into the paper, some of his friends will see it and give me news of him.
Admeh Drake put his pencil into his pocket feeling a sense of shame at his duplicity with this little waif. He would have been glad to help her, but it seemed useless to disappoint her credulity by confessing that his relations with the press were entirely fictitious. “Well, I hope you get the money,” he said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help you, I will. But don’t you want me to see you home, Maxie?”
“Sure!” said the girl, frankly, and after pulling on a rather soiled automobile coat and adjusting a top-heavy plumed black hat, she descended the stairs of the theatre with Admeh and they found themselves on Market Street.
“It’s a little late to get anything to eat,” Admeh suggested, tentatively, trusting to his luck. He was not disappointed.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied the girl. “I always have supper after I get home, anyway.”
Half the worry was off his mind, but without a cent in his pocket, the question of transportation troubled him. If worst came to worst, Admeh decided that he would take Maxie home in a carriage, see her safely indoors, and then return and have it out with the driver. But first he ventured another insinuation. “It’s a beautiful night!” he remarked. At that moment the fog enveloped the upper half of the Spreckels Building, and the tall and narrow column was visible only as an irregular pattern of soft, blurred yellow lights.
“Fine!” said Maxie. “Let’s walk.”
She took his arm blithely, happy at her release from work, and they crossed over, went up Grant Avenue to Post Street and there turned toward Union Square. A short distance ahead of them a tall man in a gray mackintosh was walking with somewhat painful carefulness up the street. His deviations seemed to testify to a rather jovial evening’s indulgence. The two rapidly approached him, and Admeh had scarcely time to notice his yellow beard and hair when the stranger turned into a doorway. The house he entered was gaudily painted in red and yellow with stars and crescents, and so fiercely lighted with electric lamps that no wayfarer, however dazed, could fail to notice the sign: “Hammam Baths—Gentlemen’s Entrance.” When Admeh turned to Maxie she was as pale as if she had seen a ghost. She looked up at him with a glitter in her eyes.
“Here!” she exclaimed, opening her purse and thrusting a dollar into his hand. “Go in there and see if that man who just went in has the word ’Dotty’ tattooed on his right arm! Find out who he is, and come to the theatre and tell me.”