Dougal conferred with Benton. "You wait here, Benton, and wherever Cayley goes, you follow him. I'm going out after Fancy. There'll be the hell to pay to-night if we don't find her. I've never seen her that way before, and it looks like trouble to me!"
With that, he hurried out of the restaurant.
She had run out into the rain without either coat or umbrella. Turning down Commercial Street in the direction of the ferry, she walked hurriedly, as if bent on some special errand; but, at the foot of Market Street, she hesitated, then crossed, walked along East Street past the water-front, saloons and sailors' boarding-houses, stumbling and slipping on the uneven, reeking, board sidewalks. Then she went up Howard Street, dark and gloomy, all the way to Fourth Street. Here she made back for the lights of Market Street, crossed, looked idly in at a drug store window for fully five minutes. A man came up and accosted her jocosely. She turned and stared at him without replying a word, and he walked away.
Then, almost running, now, she flew straight for Granthope's office. Looking up from the street, she saw a light in his window. She ran up the stairs and paused for a moment to get her breath outside his office door. Just at that moment a voice came to her from inside, and then a man's answered, followed by a chorus of soft laughter. She stood transfixed, biting her lip nervously, listening. The woman's voice went on, evenly.
Fancy staggered slowly down the stairs and went out again into the storm. Down Geary to Market Street, down Market Street, hopelessly, aimlessly. Here the rain beat upon her mercilessly in great sheets. Again she stopped, looking up and down wildly. Finally she turned the corner and went into the ladies' entrance of the "Hospital." A waiter led her to a booth where she could be alone.
The "Hospital" was, perhaps, the most respectable saloon in the city where women were permitted. The whole rear of the establishment was given over to a magnificently fitted-up department devoted to such women as were willing to be seen there. One might go and still retain a certain relic of good-repute, if one went with a man—there were married women enough who did, and reckless girls, too, who took the risk; but it was on the frontier of vice, where amateur and professional met.
From a wide, carpeted passage booths opened to right and left; little square rooms, with partitions running up part way, screened off with heavy red plush portières hanging from brass rods. Each of these compartments was finished in a different kind of rare wood, handsomely designed. Arching from a heavy, molded cornice, where owls sat at stately intervals, an elaborately coffered ceiling rose, and in the center was suspended a globe of cathedral glass, electric lighted, glowing like a full moon.
Fancy hung up her jacket to dry and ordered a hot lemonade. Then she went down to the telephone and called up Gay P. Summer's house number. She got him, at last, and asked him, tremulously, to come down to the "Hospital" and see her. She would wait for him. He seemed surprised, but she would not explain, and, after a short discussion, he consented. She went back to the "Toa" room and waited, sipping her drink.
All about her was a persistent babble of voices, the women's raucous, hard and cold, mingled occasionally with the guffaws of men. Across the way, through an opening of the portières, she could see an over-dressed girl tilted back in her chair puffing a cigarette. White-aproned waiters passed and repassed, looking neither to the right nor left.
She was staring fixedly at the wall, her elbows on the table, her chin on the backs of her hands, when Gay entered a little crossly. She looked up with a smile—almost her old winning smile—though it drooped in a moment and was set again with an effort.