Mr. Thomas, the floor manager, a serious, pleasant looking man with the smothered eyes of a resigned drudge, received two packages of dimes from the cashier and brought them to the perfume counter and handed them to Babe, who gave him a rumpled five-dollar bill in exchange. A dance hall girl with a skirt vainly trying to reach her knees rushed up to the root beer counter and called for a mug of brew. A sleepy, shuffling black mama wheeling a baby carriage sauntered in with a piece of salmon cloth between her fingers, to be matched.

A white woman with a pallid face, twitching mouth and fluttering fingers stopped at Babe’s counter, idled over the cosmetics, picked up an ounce vial of perfume, palmed it to Babe with a bill and a dime. Babe looked at the bill, wrapped the glass bottle and a compact case and handed it to the customer. She rang up the dime on the register.

Babe was first aware that Jenny was in the store when she spotted her three counters away. A man in a brown suit and another one with a black derby hat were close behind her.

Babe began to have nervous tremors. Good God! If she had only seen them before. She had just sold some stuff to the frail looking girl with the slender embalmed fingers, who, clasping the package against her breast, was still idling about the aisles. Why the hell didn’t she get out! The chauffeur was waiting for her by the door.

Babe felt sure now that those purposeful looking men with Jenny were dicks.

Jenny was moving towards the pale girl with the incriminating package.

There were four cartons of dope-loaded compacts under Babe’s counter. How to get rid of them? It sure looked like Jenny had squealed.

Just then Rose, the girl who helped get Babe her job, and who worked at the adjoining counter where manicuring articles were on display, stepped over and asked,

“Say, Babe, have we got any more orange sticks around here, or will I have to send down to the stock room? There’s a lady here who wants an orange stick!”

Babe felt her heart leap.

“Look under my counter, Rose,” she said.

When Rose bent down to look under the counter Babe stooped down with her. She seized the four cartons and thrust them into Rose’s hands.

“For God’s sake, Rose, take these down to the stock room and hide them good. Make believe you’re looking for something down there. I’ll watch your counter for you.”

“All right,” said Rose.

“Hurry!” said Babe.

Rose headed for the back of the store and hurried down the employees’ stairs to the stock room.

Babe with a gasp of relief turned to the impatient customer at Rose’s counter.