1.

　　New York welcomed Jill, as she came out of the Pennsylvania Stationinto Seventh Avenue, with a whirl of powdered snow that touched hercheek like a kiss, the cold, bracing kiss one would expect from thisvivid city. She stood at the station entrance, a tiny figure besidethe huge pillars, looking round her with eager eyes. A wind waswhipping down the avenue. The sky was a clear, brilliant tent of thebrightest blue. Energy was in the air, and hopefulness. She wonderedif Mr Elmer Mariner ever came to New York. It was hard to see howeven his gloom would contrive to remain unaffected by theexhilaration of the place.

　　Yes, New York looked good . . . good and exciting, with all thetaxi-cabs rattling in at the dark tunnel beside her, with all thepeople hurrying in and hurrying out, with all this medley ofstreet-cars and sky-signs and crushed snow and drays and horses andpolicemen, and that vast hotel across the street, towering to heavenlike a cliff. It even smelt good. She remembered an old picture inPunch, of two country visitors standing on the step of their railwaycarriage at a London terminus, one saying ecstatically to other:

　　"Don't speak! Just sniff! Doesn't it smell of the Season!" She knewexactly how they had felt, and she approved of their attitude. Thatwas the right way to behave on being introduced to a greatmetropolis. She stood and sniffed reverently. But for the presence ofthe hurrying crowds, she could almost have imitated the example ofthat king who kissed the soil of his country on landing from hisship.

　　She took Uncle Chris' letter from her bag. He had written from anaddress on East Fifty-seventh Street. There would be just time tocatch him before he went out to lunch. She hailed a taxi-cab whichwas coming out of the station.

　　It was a slow ride, halted repeatedly by congestion of the traffic,but a short one for Jill. She was surprised at herself, a Londoner oflong standing, for feeling so provincial and being so impressed. ButLondon was far away. It belonged to a life that seemed years ago anda world from which she had parted for ever. Moreover, this wasundeniably a stupendous city through which her taxi-cab was carryingher. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged into awhirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which pouredin from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the automobiles inthe world were gathered together. On the sidewalks, pedestrians,muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to andfro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain whichmade the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets ofsome eastern city of romance.

　　The cab drew up in front of a stone apartment house; and Jill,getting out, passed under an awning through a sort of mediaevalcourtyard, gay with potted shrubs, to an inner door. She wasimpressed. The very atmosphere was redolent of riches, and shewondered how in the world Uncle Chris had managed to acquire wealthon this scale in the extremely short space of time which had elapsedsince his landing. There bustled past her an obvious millionaire--or,more probably, a greater monarch of finance who looked down upon meremillionaires and out of the goodness of his heart tried to check atendency to speak patronisingly to them. He was concealed to theeyebrows in a fur coat, and, reaching the sidewalk, was instantlyabsorbed in a large limousine. Two expensive-looking ladies followedhim. Jill began to feel a little dazed. Evidently the tales one heardof fortunes accumulated overnight in this magic city were true, andone of them must have fallen to the lot of Uncle Chris. For nobody towhom money was a concern could possibly afford to live in a placelike this. If Croesus and the Count of Monte Cristo had applied forlodging there, the authorities would probably have looked on them alittle doubtfully at first and hinted at the desirability of amonth's rent in advance.

　　In a glass case behind the inner door, reading a newspaper andchewing gum, sat a dignified old man in the rich uniform of a generalin the Guatemalan army. He was a brilliant spectacle. He wore nojewelry, but this, no doubt, was due to a private distaste fordisplay. As there was no one else of humbler rank at hand from whomJill could solicit an introduction and the privilege of an audience,she took the bold step of addressing him directly.

　　"I want to see Major Selby, please."The Guatemalan general arrested for a moment the rhythmic action ofhis jaws, lowered his paper and looked at her with raised eyebrows.

　　At first Jill thought that he was registering haughty contempt, thenshe saw what she had taken for scorn was surprise.

　　"Major Selby?""Major Selby.""No Major Selby living here.""Major Christopher Selby.""Not here," said the associate of ambassadors and the pampered pet ofGuatemala's proudest beauties. "Never heard of him in my life!"2.

　　Jill had read works of fiction in which at certain crises everythinghad "seemed to swim" in front of the heroine's eyes, but never tillthis moment had she experienced that remarkable sensation herself.

　　The Savior of Guatemala did not actually swim, perhaps, but hecertainly flickered. She had to blink to restore his prismaticoutlines to their proper sharpness. Already the bustle and noise ofNew York had begun to induce in her that dizzy condition of unrealitywhich one feels in dreams, and this extraordinary statement added thefinishing touch.

　　Perhaps the fact that she had said "please" to him when she openedthe conversation touched the heart of the hero of a thousandrevolutions. Dignified and beautiful as he was to the eye of thestranger, it is unpleasant to have to record that he lived in a worldwhich rather neglected the minor courtesies of speech. People did notoften say "please" to him. "Here!" "Hi!" and "Gosh darn you!" yes;but seldom "please." He seemed to approve of Jill, for he shifted hischewing-gum to a position which facilitated speech, and began to behelpful.

　　"What was the name again?""Selby.""Howja spell it?""S-e-l-b-y.""S-e-l-b-y. Oh, Selby?""Yes, Selby.""What was the first name?""Christopher.""Christopher?""Yes, Christopher.""Christopher Selby? No one of that name living here.""But there must be."The veteran shook his head with an indulgent smile.

　　"You want Mr Sipperley," he said tolerantly. In Guatemala thesemistakes are always happening. "Mr George Sipperley. He's on thefourth floor. What name shall I say?"He had almost reached the telephone when Jill stopped him. This is anage of just-as-good substitutes, but she refused to accept anyunknown Sipperley as a satisfactory alternative for Uncle Chris.

　　"I don't want Mr Sipperley. I want Major Selby.""Howja spell it once more?""S-e-l-b-y.""S-e-l-b-y. No one of that name living here. Mr. Sipperley--"--hespoke in a wheedling voice, as if determined, in spite of herself, tomake Jill see what was in her best interests--"Mr Sipperley's on thefourth floor. Gentleman in the real estate business," he addedinsinuatingly. "He's got blond hair and a Boston bull-dog.""He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bulldogs . . .""Only one. Jack his name is."". . . But he isn't the right man. It's absurd. Major Selby wrote tome from this address. This _is_ Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?""This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street," conceded the othercautiously.

　　"I've got his letter here." She opened her bag, and gave anexclamation of dismay. "It's gone!""Mr Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last Fall. A MrRobertson. Dark-complected man with a mustache.""I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back.

　　I must have dropped it.""There's a Mr Rainsby on the seventh floor. He's a broker down onWall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech."Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

　　"Never mind," she said. "I must have made a mistake. I was quite surethat this was the address, but it evidently isn't. Thank you so much.

　　I'm so sorry to have bothered you."She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points westspeechless: for people who said "Thank you so much" to him were evenrarer than those who said "please." He followed her with anaffectionate eye till she was out of sight, then, restoring hischewing-gum to circulation, returned to the perusal of his paper. Amomentary suggestion presented itself to his mind that what Jill hadreally wanted was Mr Willoughby on the eighth floor, but it was toolate to say so now: and soon, becoming absorbed in the narrative of aspirited householder in Kansas who had run amuck with a hatchet andslain six, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

　　3.

　　Jill walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her waythoughtfully along the breezy street which, flanked on one side bythe Park and on the other by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and theapartment houses of the wealthy, ends in the humbler and moredemocratic spaces of Columbus Circle. She perceived that she was inthat position, familiar to melodrama, of being alone in a great city.

　　The reflection brought with it a certain discomfort. The bag thatdangled from her wrist contained all the money she had in the world,the very broken remains of the twenty dollars which Uncle Chris hadsent her at Brookport. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, andno immediately obvious means of adding to her capital. It was asituation which she had not foreseen when she set out to walk toBrookport station.

　　She pondered over the mystery of Uncle Chris' disappearance, andfound no solution. The thing was inexplicable. She was as sure of theaddress he had given in his letter as she was of anything in theworld. Yet at that address nothing had been heard of him. His namewas not even known. These were deeper waters than Jill was able tofathom.

　　She walked on, aimlessly. Presently she came to Columbus Circle, and,crossing Broadway at the point where that street breaks out into aneruption of automobile stores, found herself suddenly hungry,opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate glass.

　　On the other side of this glass, at marble-topped tables, apparentlycareless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious,lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by. Itreminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the center ofthe window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples andgrape-fruit, a white-robed ministrant at a stove juggled ceaselesslywith buckwheat cakes. He struck the final note in the candidness ofthe establishment, a priest whose ritual contained no mysteries.

　　Spectators with sufficient time on their hands to permit them tostand and watch were enabled to witness a New York mid-day meal inevery stage of its career, from its protoplasmic beginnings as astream of yellowish-white liquid poured on top of the stove to itsultimate Nirvana in the interior of the luncher in the form of anappetising cake. It was a spectacle which no hungry girl couldresist. Jill went in, and, as she made her way among the tables, avoice spoke her name.

　　"Miss Mariner!"Jill jumped, and thought for a moment that the thing must have beenan hallucination. It was impossible that anybody in the place shouldhave called her name............