“New York in the winter is no place for a sailor, Martin, and you’re paying off with very little.”
“I know.” He leaned toward the officer and spoke in a low voice. “I know. But there’s something important to be found out, Mister. Important to myself, yes—and to you, and perhaps to more than both of us.” He pointed beyond the warehouses to the pinnacles of the city. “That old line won’t stay. But there’s a basic pattern under it that will remain. That ought to be known. Damn it, Mister, I won’t find it nor, perhaps, my son, but if we keep looking—” He picked up his bag.
Infinitely puzzled, the mate looked after him.
“That’s that,” he said to himself.
Martin went down the gangplank and, without turning, started for the city. He took the elevated to Chatham Square where he got off and asked a policeman for an address. The shock of change from the cleanliness and solitude of the ocean to this polyglot of grime and faces was physical; and he tightened up his nerves as though preparing for an explosion. A few minutes later he walked into Relief Headquarters, a rusty, high-walled building in the center of the Bowery. Policemen watched the group of applicants carefully. There were two lines of men, one set apart for seamen. Martin joined this group, noticing how strangely the sailors, tanned, alert and swaggering, contrasted with the white-faced, hopeless habitués. When his turn came a clerk, tired, frowning, looked up from his desk.
“Name?”
“Devaud.”
“De what?”
“Devaud,” answered Martin. “Vaud, as in vaudeville.”
“Age?”