“I will have one called.”
“This man has influence here,” Jeanne thought a moment later, as, side by side, they left the building. “Who can he be?” Her interest increased tenfold.
“We will go this way.”
They turned west, went over the bridge, crossed the street to the south, then turned west again.
“Oh, but this—this is rather terrible!” Jeanne protested. Scarcely five minutes had passed. They had left the glitter and glory of jewels, rich silks and costly furs behind. Now they were passing through throngs of men. Roughly clad men they were, many in rags. Their faces were rough and seamed, their hands knotted and blue with cold. Jeanne drew her long coat tightly about her.
“No one will harm you.” Her strange companion took her arm.
The street setting was as drab as were those who wandered there: cheap movies displaying gaudy posters, cheaper restaurants where one might purchase a plate of beans and a cup of coffee for a dime. The wind was rising. Picking up scraps of paper and bits of straw, it sent them in an eddy, whirling them round and round. Like dead souls in some lost world, these bits appeared to find no place to rest.
“See!” said her companion. “They are like the men who wander here; they have no resting place.”
Jeanne shuddered.
But suddenly her attention was arrested by a falling object that was neither paper nor straw, but a pigeon.