Dumont came in and handled the components. “Mean-looking damn thing,” he said softly.
“They all on the phones?” Rome asked.
“By now. I better get back out there.”
At the door Dumont turned and said, “Maybe we can cover all the girls that work there. I got them asking about visitors, too, like to the law offices. But we can miss a visitor easy.”
“I know that.”
“So we miss her on the phone. She doesn’t hear a radio. She doesn’t hear it over TV. She doesn’t look in her purse.”
“Then we can’t help her.”
“And it will probably happen just like that,” Dumont said. “Just like that.”
Jane Ann Kimball had arrived at the eighteenth floor offices of the Miller, Hogan, and Brie Advertising Agency at three-thirty, and had told the girl behind the window that she was fifteen minutes early for her appointment with Mr. Walter Shambrun, the art director. She put her portfolio on the chair beside her and took one of the trade periodicals from a nearby table. She put her heavy shoulder bag on top of the portfolio, fixed the collar of her pale tan tailored suit. She wore an apricot scarf knotted around her throat. Her blouse and the heavy soft-leather shoulder bag were white. Her hair was a soft brown that was almost blonde, and cut quite short. She was a big girl, with striking shoulders, a look of cleanness and pride. She carried herself in a way that, in another woman, might have looked like arrogance. In Jane Ann Kimball it merely underlined the obvious fact that she was a handsome, desirable woman. It was a manner that was without consciousness of self.
She felt a sick nervousness about this interview. So very much depended on it. If it went well, it would be so much easier to explain everything to Bob. If it went poorly, he would have the winning gambit and he would make use of it.
It was twenty minutes after four when a man strolled into the waiting room. He had an abundance of thick gray hair and a deeply lined face.
“You must be Miss Kimball, my dear. I’m Walter Shambrun. Will you please come along with me?”
He herded her ahead of him down a corridor and through a big room where she received a confusing impression of many people working at desks and drawing boards. She was glad to sit down in the small office.
Shambrun smiled at her. “So Mamie Gilbraith says you have promise. How is the ancient toad, by the way? Don’t look so startled, my dear. Mamie and I are very old friends.”
“She’s fine, Mr. Shambrun.”
“Mamie told me over the phone that you’ve been doing some work for her. How did you make that mistake?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“How did you happen to start working with Mamie?”
“I applied for a job in the advertising department at the store. They couldn’t take on anyone. But the man who interviewed me said I could go to work as a clerk and do some modeling, and when there was an opening, they’d transfer me to Miss Gilbraith’s department.”
“But of course they haven’t done that.”
“No, they haven’t.”
“And Mamie has been using your sketches and paying you nothing.”
“She couldn’t, because...”
“I know. Mamie, with her limited budget, was perfectly willing to use your work until her conscience began to hurt a bit. So she sent you to me.”
“She knows I want to get into commercial illustration and...”
“What is your training?”
“I took a Fine Arts course in college and majored in Design. I took commercial illustration courses. And for over a year I’ve been...”
“Giving work away at that store.”
“I guess you could call it that, Mr. Shambrun. But it’s been experience.”
Shambrun sighed, a bit too obviously. “Well, let me see what you’ve brought.”
She handed him the portfolio and he opened it in front of him. The work which had seemed to her to look so competent and professional at home now looked botched and amateurish. He flipped the drawings over much too rapidly. He closed the portfolio and handed it back.
Her heart left like lead. “Are they... bad?” she asked.
“You can draw, my dear. We get so many who can’t even draw, you know.”
“Thank you. I would like to work here, Mr. Shambrun.”
He smiled. “We’d like to have you. You’re highly decorative, Miss Kimball. But I’m very sorry. There’s no room.”
“When will there be room?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Shall I come back in three months?”
He looked at her for what seemed a long time and then shook his head. “Miss Kimball, I should brush you off politely. But Mamie likes you. Out of courtesy to an old friend, let me presume to give you some advice. You are a handsome young girl, obviously healthy and, I would say, well balanced. Why do you want so badly to get into this sort of rat race?”
“It’s what I want to do.”
“Do you want to do this work, or do you want to prove to yourself or somebody else that you can do it?”
“What difference would that make to you, if I can do it?”
“All right, I’ll tell you what difference it makes. One, I’m not sure you can do it. Two, if you’re just trying to prove something, you won’t be with us long. And really a new person is of very little real use to me for the first two or three years. Were you quite ugly, I might risk employing you.”
“You talk as if this was some sort of a... a game or something with me, Mr. Shambrun. I work for my living.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
She looked at him and knew that it was no good. Somehow he had formed his opinion of her and he would not change it. This was a temperamental, emotional man, who doubtless considered himself to be very logical and reasonable. Jane Ann knew she had been a fool to be so optimistic. She wished she had not told Bob she was certain to get the job.
“Thank you for talking to me, Mr. Shambrun,” she said politely.
“Perfectly all right, my dear. Sorry we have no room for you.”
She took the long lonely walk from his office door down through the big room where she had hoped to work. She found the corridor, the reception room, the outside corridor. Girls were coming out of other offices on that floor, homeward bound. Jane Ann had pushed the elevator button. The elevator stopped. She got in. A dozen girls followed her in.
The car stopped at seventeen. More office workers crowded on. Jane Ann was pushed back against the people who stood against the back wall of the elevator. When not one other person could be accommodated, the elevator took the long swooping drop to the lobby floor and the operator slid the door back. The man behind Jane Ann squirmed rudely by her, pushing her off balance, thrusting his way through the other girls who made shrill angry comments. Jane Ann felt a momentary annoyance, but it faded quickly, lost in the greater sadness of the lost job.
When she emerged from the elevator, one girl was helping another up. They both had flushed angry faces. “The nerve of that guy!” Jane Ann walked out of the building and turned west. Behind her she heard a screaming of tires and the blast of a policeman’s whistle. She did not look around.
It was too late to go back to the store. She knew she would have to tell Bob and she wanted to get that over with. She went to a phone booth in the back of a cigar store and phoned his office, asked to speak to Mr. Robert Larrimore.
“Jane Ann? How did it go, honey?”
“I... I didn’t get it,” she said.
“Gee, that’s a shame,” he said, and his voice seemed properly sympathetic, but Jane Ann thought she detected a half-hidden note of relief.
“You’re terribly sorry, aren’t you?”