Two or three other lodgers gathered curiously, one suggesting a restaurant where he might be found, another a club where he sometimes went and a third laughed and called out from half way up the stairs:
“You'll find him at the cabaret around the corner by ten o'clock to-night if you don't find him sooner. He's always there when he's in town.”
Sick at heart Lynn went on her way, trying carefully each place that had been suggested but finding no trace of him. She met with only deference for her uniform wherever she went, and without the slightest fear she travelled through streets at night that she would scarcely have liked to pass alone in the daytime in her ordinary garb. But all the time her heart was praying that she might find Mark before it was too late. She tried every little clue that was given her, hoping against hope that she would not have to search for her old friend in a cabaret such as she knew that place around the corner must be. But it was almost ten o'clock and she had not found Mark. She went back to the first address once more, but he had not come, and so she finally turned her steps toward the cabaret.
Sadly, with her heart beating wildly, hoping, yet fearing to find him, she paused just inside the doors and looked around, trying to get used to the glare and blare, the jazz and the smoke, and the strange lax garb, and to differentiate the individuals from the crowd.
Food and drink, smoke and song, wine and dance, flesh and odd perfumes! Her soul sank within her, and she turned bewildered to a servitor at the door.
“I wonder, is there any way to find a special person here? I have a very important message.”
The man bent his head deferentially as though to one from another world, “Who did you want, Miss?”
“Mr. Mark Carter,” said Marilyn, feeling the color rise in her cheeks at letting even this waiter see that she expected to find Mark Carter here.
The man looked up puzzled. He was rather new at the place. He summoned another passing one of his kind:
“Carter, Carter?” the man said thoughtfully, “Oh, yes, he's the guy that never drinks! He's over there at the table in the far corner with the little dancer lady—” The waiter pointed and Lynn looked, “Would you like me to call him, Miss?” Lynn reflected quickly. Perhaps he might try to evade her. She must run no risks.