“Where am I and where am I to go?” she asked herself in a wild attempt to gather her scattered senses. In vain she endeavored to recall the name of the street she was on at that moment. Her efforts to recall the route she had taken in getting there were quite as futile.
“Wish I were in Chicago,” she breathed. “The very worst of it is better than this. There at least I have friends somewhere. Here I have none anywhere. Wish Florence were here.”
At that she caught herself up; there was no use in wishing for things that could not be. The question was, what did she intend to do? Was she to seek out a hotel and spend the night there, to resume her search for the first person in America who had sold the ancient copy of the Angler, or was she to take the first train back to Chicago? She had a feeling that she had seen the man she sought and that weeks of search might not reveal him again; yet she disliked going back to Frank Morrow with so little to show for his hundred dollars invested.
“Anyway,” she said at last with a shudder, “I’ve got to get out of here. Boo! it seems like the very depths of the slums!”
She started on at a brisk pace. Having gone a half block she faced about suddenly; she fancied she heard footsteps behind her. She saw nothing but an empty street.
“Nerves,” she told herself. “I’ve got to get over that. I know what’s the matter with me though; I haven’t eaten for hours. I’ll find a restaurant pretty soon and get a cup of coffee.”
There is a strange thing about our great cities; in certain sections you may pass a half dozen coffee shops and at least three policemen in a single block; in other sections you may go an entire mile without seeing either. Evidently, eating places, like policemen, crave company of their own kind. Lucile had happened upon a policeless and eat-shopless section of New York. For a full twenty minutes she tramped on through the fog, growing more and more certain at every step that she was being followed by someone, and not coming upon a single person or shop that offered her either food or protection.
Suddenly she found herself in the midst of a throng of people. A movie theater had disgorged this throng. Like a sudden flood of water, they surrounded her and bore her on. They poured down the street to break up into two smaller streams, one of which flowed on down the street and the other into a hole in the ground. Having been caught in the latter stream, and not knowing what else to do, eager for companionship of whatever sort, the girl allowed herself to be borne along and down into the hole. Down a steep flight of steps she was half carried, to be at last deposited on a platform, alongside of which in due time a train of electric cars came rattling in.
“The subway,” she breathed. “It will take me anywhere, providing I know where I want to go.”
Just as she was beginning to experience a sense of relief from contact with this flowing mass of humanity she was given a sudden shock. To the right of her, through a narrow gap in the throng, she recognized a face. The gap closed up at once and the face disappeared, but the image of it remained. It was the face of the man she had seen in the shop, he of the birthmark on his chin.