Perhaps, she thought, I'm not as smart as I thought I was. There may be deep and illogical currents in me. Perhaps I'm not, not mature enough for such power as I've been given.
Annoyed, she took out a cigarette, and in defiance of cultural tradition, lit it there in the corridor while she waited for the elevator.
The operator did not approve of women smoking in public. He said so.
She ate in the coffee shop.
After the meal, she took a cab to the offices of the morning paper.
In the entranceway to the building, sure that no one was watching, she became invisible.
Half an hour later, possessed of the information she had come after (harvested from the back files of the paper) she was once again in the street.
In her room, she went to the telephone. She placed a long distance call to a Boston hospital.
The news had not been widely reported. She found most of the names in brief paragraphs stating that Mr. and Mrs. such and such had settled their suit against the so and so hospital out of court. In the three cases where the confinements had been in private homes, there had been kidnapping stories in the paper. In one of the cases, a man had later been convicted and executed—although the body of the child had never been recovered from the pond into which the prosecution contended it had been thrown.
She talked to the switch board operator at the Boston hospital. She was given the superintendent. He—impressed by the fact that she was calling from the Pacific coast—sent his secretary to rummage the files for the hospital's copy of the birth certificate.