—5—
Saw Leon for a few minutes next day and talked over our predicament. Neither of us had anything to offer, so we didn’t come to any decision. He was leaving Paris in a couple of days, but I’d see him again before he went.
In view of what happened later, I was glad I was going to see him again, because we simply had to do something. I ran into Jay-Jay and had to duck down an alley and through a haberdashery in order to elude him. He was just like a bad tooth: you forgot about him until he began to hurt again.... Now that he knew I was in Paris he’d be on the watch for me.... I didn’t know what to do. The only thing that I could do, as far as I could see, was tell my troubles to Captain Winstead and let him devise some means of getting rid of Jay-Jay. I was sure the Captain would not try to take advantage of my predicament—but of course I hated to tell him the truth.
However, I made up my mind to do it the first chance I had, so that evening before Ben joined us I tried to lead up to the subject by asking the Captain if he thought it was possible for a woman to disguise herself as a man and get away with it for very long.
He said promptly that it would be exceedingly difficult. “A man can disguise as a woman and go on forever, or until he reaches the morgues, but a woman ... why, you can tell a woman every time. With any cleverness at all, a man can take a wig and a few rags and practice with his voice a while and come out a woman that can pass in any crowd. But a woman is entirely different. You never heard of a great male impersonator, did you? I mean, a woman who became famous because she could make up as a man? No—because, well, you can spot a woman every time, in spite of the most masculine of clothes and manners.”
I had to laugh. This was the man whom General Backett said was one of the “cleverest in France.” But I didn’t forget what I was aiming at, although I couldn’t, for the life of me, see how I could tell him. I just continued the conversation by asking, “What sense would you rely upon to detect a woman in disguise?... Sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch?”
We both laughed. I guess we were thinking of the same thing. Anyway, he answered me. “Well, of course, I wouldn’t recommend the use of the sense of taste or smell, although doubtless either would prove effective means of discovery. You could not depend upon the sound of the voice. No doubt the sense of touch could be relied upon as the surest method, but then it would be rather a delicate problem to bring about a situation in which you could try out the sense of touch. I mean, if a woman were in disguise she certainly would be careful not to let anyone feel around looking for evidence that would promptly give her away.... I guess the best way—well, you can usually tell a woman by looking at her. I guess the sense of sight is the one we’d have to use.”
“But you couldn’t be sure, just from looking at a woman, could you?”
“Well—it’s a case of the little things counting,” he replied, with a smile. “Sooner or later she would give herself away. We’d just keep our eyes open and see what we would see.”
We didn’t have a chance to continue the discussion nearer the real subject that was on my mind, for at this point Ben appeared and we set off to visit a woman named Fernande, whom the Captain described as second only to Ada Gedouin when it came to “that sensuous loveliness.”