“I ain’t got any family.”
“With friends, then?”
“No; furnished room.”
“Tell me exactly what happened last night.”
“Well, your honor, I was on the early shift, bein’ I been workin’ there at the White Tile longer than any of the other girls, so I got off about seven and I says to myself I can’t go home to that hot room of mine this early so I guess I’ll go take in a movie show, so I goes into the Idle Hour. It’s cool in there and I can rest my feet, I says; if you ever done any waitin,’ your honor, you know how hard it is on the feet. Well, I goes in and they’re showin’ a lovely picture all about an Arab prince that fell in love with a white girl and carried her off to his tent and——”
“Please be as brief as possible, Miss Keck.”
“Well, your honor, this man was sittin’ next to me, and I paid no attention to him except to notice that his face was sort of sickly and his eyes sort of wild. I didn’t give him no encouragement, your honor; I’m a decent girl. I just watched the film. Well, I slipped my pumps off my feet and leaned back to take it easy when all of a sudden he reaches out and kisses me right on the face. I screamed. I got all sort of hysterical. Then some men began punchin’ him and the ushers dragged him up the aisle and I was that upset—nothin’ of the kind ever having happened to me before—that I screamed some more; and when the cop come and asked did I want to have him run in, I said I did. I was afraid the men would kill him; they was beatin’ him something fierce and he wasn’t very strong lookin’——”
“Don’t you want to press the case?”
“I—I dunno, your honor.”
“Well, I do. I’m not going to let you withdraw your complaint, Miss Keck. I happen to be the father of nine children, six of them growing girls. For their sake and the sake of the rest of the womanhood of the city, I’m going to see if something can’t be done about men like this. Is that man over there the one who kissed you?”