The card read as follows:
DO NOT FEED OR ANNOY!
BOLBOCERAS AMERICANUS MULS
HABITAT HERE!
CHAPTER III—JACOB ZANIN
THE Crossroads Theater was nothing more than an old store, with a shallow stage built in at the rear and a rough foyer boarded off at the front. The seats were rows of undertaker's chairs, But the lighting was managed with some skill; and the scenery, built and painted in the neighborhood, bordered on a Barker-Craig-Reinhardt effectiveness.
Peter and Hy stood for a little time in the foyer, watching the audience come in. It was a distinctly youthful audience—the girls and women were attractive, most of them Americans; the men running more foreign, with a good many Russian Jews among them. They all appeared to be great friends. And they handled one another a good deal. Peter, self-conscious, hunting copy as always, saw one tired-looking young Jewish painter catch the hand of a pretty girl—an extraordinarily pretty girl, blonde, of a slimly rounded figure—and press and caress her fingers as he chatted casually with a group.
After a moment the girl drew her hand away gently, half-apologetically, while a faint wave of color flowed to her transparent cheek.