Part 1

Chapter 14,041 wordsPublic domain

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FIND THE WOMAN

ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Author of "Uneasy Street," etc.

With four illustrations by Dean Cornwell

New York Cosmopolitan Book Corporation MCMXXI

_To ETHEL PETTIT ROCHE_

_Let Philip win his Clancy,_ _As heroes always do;_ _To each his own sweet fancy--_ _My fancy is for you._

The Illustrations by DEAN CORNWELL

CLANCY DEANE, THE HEROINE OF FIND THE WOMAN _Frontispiece_ CLANCY ROSE SLOWLY TO HER FEET--"UNLOCK THAT DOOR AND LET ME OUT----" 44 GRANNIS POINTED TO CLANCY--"ARREST HER, OFFICER," HE CRIED 146 "WHO'S GOING TO BELIEVE THAT KIND OF YARN?" CAREY DEMANDED 232

As the taxi stopped, Clancy leaned forward. Yes; she'd read the sign aright! It was Fifth Avenue that she saw before her.

Fifth Avenue! And she, Clancy Deane, of Zenith, Maine, was looking at it with her own eyes! Dreams _did_ come true, after all. She, forty-eight hours ago a resident of a sleepy Maine town, was in the city whence came those gorgeous women who, in the summer-time, thrilled her as they disembarked from their yachts in Zenith Harbor, to stroll around the town, amusement in their eyes.

She looked to the left. A limousine, driven by a liveried chauffeur, beside whom sat another liveried man, was also stopped by the policeman in the center of the avenue. Furtively, Clancy eyed the slim matron who sat, leaning back, in the rear of the car. From the jaunty toque of blue cloth trimmed with gold, down the chinchilla-collared seal coat, past the edge of brown duveteen skirt to the short-vamped shoes that, although Clancy could not know it, had just come from Paris, the woman was everything that Clancy was not.

As the policeman blew a whistle and the taxi moved forward and turned up the avenue, Clancy sat more stiffly. Oh, well, give her six months-- She knew well enough that her tailor-made was not the real thing. But it was the best that Bangor, nearest city to Zenith, could provide. And it would do. So would her hat that, by the presence of the woman in the limousine, was made to seem coarse, bucolic. Even her shoes, which she had been assured were the very latest thing, were, she suddenly knew, altogether too long and narrow. But it didn't matter. In her pocketbook she held the "Open Sesame" to New York.

A few weeks, and Clancy Deane would be as well dressed as this woman to whom a moment ago she had been so close. Clothes! They were all that Clancy needed. She knew that. And it wasn't vanity that made her realize that her faintly angular figure held all the elements that, ripening, would give her shape that lissomness envied by women and admired by men. It wasn't conceit that told her that her black hair, not lusterless but with a satiny sheen, was rare in its soft luxuriousness. It wasn't egotism that assured her that her face, with its broad mouth, whose red lips could curve or pout exquisitely, its straight nose with the narrow nostrils, its wide-set gray eyes, and low, broad forehead, was beautiful.

Conceit, vanity, egotism--these were not in the Clancy Deane make-up. But she recognized her assets, and was prepared to realize from their sale the highest possible price. She could not forbear to peep into her pocketbook. Yes; it was still there--the card, oddly enough, quite simply engraved, of "Mlle. Fanchon DeLisle." And, scrawled with a muddy pen, were the mystic words: "Introducing my little friend, Florine Ladue, to Mr. Morris Beiner."

Carefully, as the taxi glided up the avenue, Clancy put the card back in the side compartment of the rather bulky pocketbook. At Forty-fifth Street, the driver turned to the left toward Times Square. She recognized the Times Building from a photograph she had seen. The taxi turned again at the north end of the square, and, a door away, stopped before what seemed to be a row of modiste's shops.

"This is the Napoli, ma'am," the driver said. "The office is up-stairs. Help you with your bag, ma'am?"

"Of course." It was with a quite careless air that she replied.

She climbed the short and narrow flight of stairs that led to the office of the Napoli with as much of an air as is possible for any human to assume mounting stairs.

A fat, jolly-seeming woman sat at a desk perched so that it commanded not merely the long, narrow dining-room but the stairs to the street. Although Clancy didn't know it, the Napoli, the best known theatrical hotel in America, had been made by throwing several old dwelling-houses together.

"A room?" suggested Clancy.

The stout woman nodded pleasantly. Whereupon Clancy paid and tipped her taxi-man. The landlady, Madame Napoli, as Clancy was soon to learn, shoved the register toward her. With a flourish Clancy signed "Florine Ladue." To append the town of Zenith as her residence was too much of an anticlimax after the "Florine Ladue." Portland was a bit more cosmopolitan, and Portland, therefore, appeared on the register.

"You have a trunk?" asked Madame Napoli.

Clancy shook her head.

"Then the terms, for a room by the week, will be fourteen dollars--in advance," said _madame_.

Clancy shrugged. Nonchalantly she opened her purse and drew forth a twenty-dollar bill. _Madame_ beamed upon her.

"You may sign checks for one week, Miss"--she consulted the register--"Miss Ladue."

"'Sign checks?'" Clancy was puzzled.

_Madame_ beamed. Also, a smaller edition of _madame_, with the same kindly smile, chuckled.

"You see," said _madame_, "my children--these are all my children." And she waved a fat hand toward the dining-room, where a few men and women were gayly chattering incomprehensible badinage to each other between mouthfuls. "But children are careless. And so--I let them sign checks for one week. If they do not pay at the end of one week----"

Clancy squared her shoulders haughtily.

"I think you need have no apprehension about me," she said stiltedly.

"Oh, I won't--not for one week," beamed _madame_. "Paul!" she called. A 'bus-boy emerged from the dining-room, wiping his hands upon a soiled apron.

"Take Miss--Ladue's bag to one hundred and eighteen," ordered _madame_. She beamed again upon Clancy. "If you like chocolate-cake, Miss Ladue, better come down early. My children gobble it up quickly."

"Thank you," said Clancy, and followed the 'bus-boy porter up two flights of stairs. Her room, fairly large, with a basin for running water and an ample closet, and, as Paul pointed out, only two doors from the bathroom, had two wide windows, and they looked out upon Times Square.

The afternoon was waning. Dots of light embellished the awesome Times Building. Back, lower down Broadway, an automobile leaped into being, poised high in the air, its wheels spinning realistically. A huge and playful kitten chased a ball of twine. A petticoat flapped back and forth in an electrically created gale.

There was a wide seat before one window, and Clancy stretched out upon it, elbows upon the sill and her cheeks pressed into her two palms. Zenith was ten million miles away. She wondered why people had hoped that she wouldn't be lonely. As if anyone _could_ be lonely in New York!

Why, the city was crowded! There were scores of things to do, scores of places to go. While, back home in Zenith, two days ago, she had finished a day just like a hundred preceding, a thousand preceding days. She had washed her hands in the women's dressing-room at Miller & Company's. She had walked home, tired out after a hard day pounding a typewriter for Mr. Frank Miller. Her aunt Hetty--she wasn't really Clancy's aunt--Clancy was an orphan--but she'd lived at Mehitabel Baker's boarding-house since her mother died, four years ago--had met her at the door and said that there was apple pie for supper and she'd saved an extra piece for her. After supper, there'd been a movie, then bed. Oh, occasionally there was a dance, and sometimes a dramatic company, fourth-rate, played at the opera-house. She thought of "Mlle. Fanchon DeLisle," whose card she carried, whose card was the "Open Sesame."

Mademoiselle DeLisle had been in the "New York Blondes." Clancy remembered how, a year ago, when the "flu" first ravaged the country, Mademoiselle DeLisle had been stricken, on the night the Blondes played Zenith. She'd almost died, too. She said herself that, if it hadn't been for Clancy, when nurses were so scarce and hard to get, that she sure would have kicked in. She'd been mighty grateful to Clancy. And when she left, a fortnight after her company, she'd given Clancy this card.

"Morris Beiner ain't the biggest guy in the world, kid," she'd said, "but he's big enough. And he can land you a job. He got me mine," she stated. Then, as she caught a glint of pity in Clancy's eyes, she went on: "Don't judge the stage by the Blondes, and don't judge actresses by me. I'm an old-timer, kid. I never could _act_. But if the movies had been in existence twenty years ago, I'd 'a' cleaned up, kid; hear me tell it. It's a crime for a girl with your looks to be pounding the keys in a two-by-four canning factory in a jerk Maine town. Why, with your looks--a clean-up in the movies--you don't have to be an actress, you know. Just look pretty and collect the salary. And a husband with kale--that's what a girl like you _really_ wants. And you can get it. Think it over, kid."

Clancy had thought it over. But it had been one of those absurdly hopeless dreams that could never be realized. And then, two months ago, had come from California an inquiry as to her possible relationship to the late Stephen Burgess. Aunt Hetty had visited the court-house, looked up marriage records, with the result that, two days ago, Clancy had received a draft for seven hundred and thirty-two dollars and forty-one cents, one-eighth of the estate of Stephen Burgess, cousin of Clancy's mother.

It wasn't a fortune, but Clancy, after a shriek, and showing the precious draft to aunt Hetty, had run up-stairs and found the card that Fanchon DeLisle had given her. She stood before the mirror. She pirouetted, turned, twisted. And made her decision. If she stayed in Zenith, she might, if lucky, marry a traveling man. One hundred dollars a week at the outside.

Better to sink in New York than float in Zenith! And Fanchon DeLisle had been so certain of Clancy's future, so roseate in her predictions, so positive that Morris Beiner would place her!

Not a regret could Clancy find in her heart for having, on the day after the receipt of the draft, left Zenith. Forever! She repeated the word to herself, gritting her teeth.

"What's the matter, kid? Did he insult you?"

Clancy looked up. In the doorway--she had left the door ajar--stood a tall young woman, a blonde. She entered without invitation and smiled cheerfully at Clancy. She whirled on one shapely foot.

"Hook me up, will you, kid? I can't fix the darned thing to save my life."

Clancy leaped to her feet and began fastening the opened dress of the woman. She worked silently, too overcome by embarrassment to speak. The blonde wriggled in her dress, making it fit more smoothly over her somewhat prominent hips. She faced Clancy.

"My name's Fay Marston. What's yours?"

"Cl--Florine Ladue," replied Clancy.

"Y-e-s, it is," grinned the other. "But it don't matter a darn, kid. It's what others call you, not what you call yourself. On the stage?"

"I expect to enter the movies," said Clancy.

"'_Enter_' them, eh? Wish I could crawl in! I'm too blamed big, they all tell me. Still, I should worry, while Mr. Ziegfeld runs the 'Follies.'"

"Are you in the 'Follies'?" asked Clancy. This was life!

Fay winked.

"Not when they're on the road, old thing. You got your job?"

"Oh, I will!" said Clancy.

Miss Marston eyed her.

"I'll say you will. With a skin like that, you'll get anywhere under God's blue canopy that you want to go. That's the secret, Flo--Florine--skin. I tell you so. Oh, well, much obliged, kid. Do as much for you sometime."

She walked to the door but hesitated on the threshold.

"Like wild parties, Florine?" she asked.

"I--I don't know," said Clancy.

"Nothing rough, you know. I never forget that I'm a lady and what's due me from gentlemen," said Fay. "But--Ike Weber 'phoned me that his little friend was laid up sick with somethin' or other, and if I could bring another girl along, he'd be obliged. Dinner and dance--at the Château de la Reine. Jazzy place, kid. You'd better come."

Clancy was thrilled. If a momentary doubt assailed her, she dismissed it at once. She could take care of herself.

"I--I'd love to. If I have anything to wear----" She hesitated.

"Well, unpack the old gripsack," grinned Fay, "and we'll soon find out."

A moment later, she was shaking out the folds of an extremely simple foulard. Another moment, and Clancy was in her knickers. Fay eyed her.

"Dance? Stage-dances, I mean. No? You oughta learn. Some pretty shape, kid. Here, lemme button this."

For a moment, Clancy hesitated. Fay patted her on the shoulder.

"Don't make any mistake about me, Florine. I'm the right kind of people for a little girl to know, all right."

"Why--why, of course you are!" said Clancy. Without further delay she permitted Fay to return her service of a while ago and hook up the pretty foulard.

Ike Weber was waiting for them in the foyer of the Château de la Reine. During the brief taxi-ride up Broadway to the cabaret, Clancy had time to suffer reaction from the momentary daring that had led her to acceptance of Fay's invitation. It was this very sort of thing against which young girls were warned by pulpit and press! She stole a searching glance at her companion's large-featured face and was reassured. Vulgar, Fay Marston might be--but vicious? "No," she decided.

And Weber's pleasant greeting served to allay any lingering fears. A good-natured, shrewd-eyed man, with uneven and slightly stained teeth, his expensive-seeming dinner jacket of dark-gray cloth, his dark, shining studs--Clancy could not tell of what jewels they were made--and his whole well-fed air seemed to reek of money. He waved a fat hand at Fay and immediately came toward them.

"You're late, Fay," he announced.

"But look what made me late!" laughed the blonde girl.

Weber bowed to Clancy with an exaggerated gallantry which he had picked up by much attendance at the theater.

"You're forgiven, Fay."

"Florine, meet Mr. Weber," pronounced Fay. "Miss--Miss--kid, I forget your name."

"'Florine' will do," said Weber. "It's a bear of a name. Call me 'Ike,' girlie."

He took Clancy's hand between his two fat palms and pressed it. He grinned at Fay.

"I'll let you do all my picking after this, Fay. Come on; check your things."

Up a heavily carpeted stairway he forced a path for them. Clancy would have lingered. Pushing against her were women dressed as she had never expected to see them dressed. There were necklaces of pearls and diamonds, coats of sable and chinchilla, gowns that even her inexperience knew cost in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands.

In the dressing-room, where she surrendered her plain cloth coat of a cheap dark-blue material to the maid, she voiced something of her amazement to Fay. The blond girl laughed.

"You'll have all they got, kid, if you take your time. At that, there isn't one of them wouldn't give all her rags for that skin of yours. Did you notice Ike's eyes? Like a cat lookin' at a plate of cream. You'll do, kid. If Ike Weber likes your looks--and he does--you should worry about fur coats."

"Who is he?" demanded Clancy.

"Broker," said Fay. "With a leanin' to the stage. They say he's got money in half a dozen shows. I dunno about that, but he's a regular feller. Nothin' fresh about Ike. Don't worry, Florine."

Clancy smiled tremulously. She wasn't worried about the possible "freshness" of a hundred Webers. She was worrying about her clothes. But as they entered the dining-room and were escorted by a deferential _maitre d'hôtel_ to a long, flower-laden table at one side, next the dancing-space, worry left her. Her shoulders straightened and her head poised confidently. For Clancy had an artistic eye. She knew that a single daisy in a simple vase will sometimes attract great attention in a conservatory filled with exotic blooms. She felt that she was that daisy to-night.

In somewhat of a daze, she let herself be presented to a dozen men and women, without catching a single name, and then sank into a chair beside Weber. He was busy talking at the moment to a petite brown-haired beauty, and Clancy was free to look about her. It was a gorgeous room, with a queer Japanesque effect to the ceiling, obtained by draperies that were, as Clancy phrased it to herself, "accordion-plaited." At the far end of the dancing-space was a broad flight of stairs that led to a sort of curtained balcony, or stage.

But it was the people at her own table who interested Clancy. The complete absence of formality that had marked their entrance--Weber had permitted them, after his escort to the dressing-room, to find their own way to the table--continued now. One gathered from the conversation that was bandied back and forth that these were the most intimate of friends, separated for years and now come together again.

A woman from another table, with a squeal of delight, rose, and, crossing over, spoke to the brown-haired girl. They kissed each other ecstatically, exchanged half a dozen sentences, and then the visitor retired. Clancy heard Weber ask the visitor's name.

"Hanged if I know! I seem to remember her faintly," said the brown-haired one.

Weber turned to Clancy.

"Get that?" he chuckled. "It's a great lane--Broadway. It ain't a place where you are _acquainted_ with people; you love 'em."

"Or hate 'em?" suggested Clancy.

Weber beamed upon her.

"Don't tell me that you're clever as well as a bear for looks, Florine! If you do, I'll be just bowled over completely."

Clancy shrugged.

"Was that clever?"

Weber chuckled.

"If you listen to the line of talk around this table--how I knocked 'em for a goal in Philly, and how Branwyn's been after me for seven months to get me to sign a contract, and how Bruce Fairchild got a company of his own because he was jealous of the way I was stealing the film from him--after a little of that, anything sounds clever. Dance, Florine?"

Back in Zenith, Ike Weber, even if he'd been the biggest business man in town, would have hesitated to ask Clancy Deane so casually to dance with him. The Deanes were real people in Zenith, even though they'd never had much money. But great-grandfather Deane had seen service in '47 in Mexico, had been wounded at the storming of Chapultepec; and grandfather Clancy had been Phil Sheridan's aide. That sort of thing mattered a whole lot in Zenith, even to-day.

But Clancy had come to New York, to Broadway, with no snobbery. All her glorious ancestry hadn't prevented her from feeling mighty lucky when Mr. Frank Miller made her his stenographer. She'd come to New York, to Broadway, to make a success, to lift herself forever beyond the Mr. Frank Millers and their factories. So it was not disinclination to letting Ike Weber's arm encircle her that made Clancy hesitate. She laughed, as he said,

"Maybe you think, because I'm a little fat, that I can't shake a nasty toe, Florine?"

"I--I'm awfully hungry," she confessed. "And--what are these things?"

She looked down at the plate before her, on which were placed almost a dozen varieties of edibles, most of them unfamiliar.

Weber laughed.

"Florine, I _like_ you!" he declared. "Why, I don't believe you know what a four-flusher is. This your first Broadway party?"

"I never saw New York until this afternoon," she confessed.

Weber eyed her closely.

"How'd you meet Fay?"

Clancy told him, told him all about the little legacy from the West, the breaking of the home ties. She mentioned that she had a card of introduction to an agent.

"Well, that'll help--maybe," said Weber. "But it don't matter. You give me a ring to-morrow afternoon, and I'll make a date with you. I know about everybody in the picture game worth knowing, and I'll start you off right."

"You're awfully good," she told him.

Weber smiled; Clancy noted, for the first time, that the merry eyes deep set in flesh, could be very hard.

"Maybe I am, and maybe I ain't. Anyway, you ring me--those are _hors d'oeuvres_, Florine. Anchovy, _salami_--try 'em."

Clancy did, and enjoyed them. Also, she liked the soup, which Weber informed her was turtle, and the fish, a filet of sole. After that, she danced with her mentor.

They returned to the table and Weber promptly began singing her praises. Thereafter, in quick succession, she danced with several men, among them Zenda, a mop-haired man with large, dreamy eyes, who informed her casually that he was giving the party. It was to celebrate, he said, the releasing of his twenty-fifth film.

"You a friend of the big blond girl that you came in with?" he asked.

"Why, she invited me!" cried Clancy. "Miss Marston--don't you know her?"

Zenda grinned.

"Oh, yes; I know her. But I didn't know she was coming to-night. My press-agent told me that I ought to give a party. He invited every one he could think of. Forty accepted, and about a dozen and a half are here. But that doesn't matter. I get the publicity just the same. Know 'em? I know every one. I ought to. I'm one of the biggest men in the films. Listen to me tell you about it," he chuckled. "Florine, you sure can dance." Like the rest, he called her by her first name.

She was blushing with pride as he took her back to the table. But, to her piqued surprise, Zenda promptly forgot all about her. However her pique didn't last long. At about the salad course, the huge curtain at the top of the wide staircase parted, and the cabaret began. For forty-five minutes it lasted, and Clancy was thrilled at its elaborateness.

At its end, the dinner had been eaten, and the party began to break up. Zenda came over to Weber.

"Feel like a game?" he asked.

"You know me," said Weber.

Ensued a whispered colloquy between five of the men. Then came many loud farewells and the making of many engagements. Clancy felt distinctly out of it. Weber, who wished her to telephone him to-morrow, seemed to forget her existence. So even did Fay, who moved toward the dressing-room. Feeling oddly neglected, Clancy followed her.

"What you doin' the rest of the evenin'?" asked Fay, as she was being helped into her coat.

"Why--I--nothing," said Clancy.

"Of course not!" Fay laughed. "I wasn't thinkin'. Want to come along with me?"

"Where are you going?" demanded Clancy cautiously. She'd heard a lot about the wickedness of New York, and to-night she had attended a dinner-party where actresses and picture-directors and backers of shows gathered. And it had been about as wicked as a church sociable in Zenith.

"Oh, Zenda and Ike and a few of the others are goin' up to Zenda's apartment. They play stud."

"'Stud?'" asked Clancy.

"Poker. They play the steepest game you ever saw, kid. Still, that'd be easy, you not havin' seen any game at all, wouldn't it? Want to come?"

"To Mr. Zenda's apartment?" Clancy was distinctly shocked.