One of my favorite clippings is the article you wrote for Wave Lengths, but, dear Mr. Starr, how can you ever think that if you fall in love you will be unrequited? Because I am sure that all the girls who have ever seen you or heard you sing must feel a good deal like myself only perhaps not so strongly, and if I—But I guess I would better not continue on that topic, or you will think I am too bold.
Now, Mr. Starr, I know you must get millions of letters from feminine admirers like myself, and I know you are too busy to answer all of them, but could not you make an exception in my case and answer this letter with a little note, no matter how brief, and tell me some things about yourself which I am dying to know, and one of them is how do you think of so many beautiful songs—do they just come into your head and you write them down? I am sure it must be a natural gift, but still I think it is wonderful that you should be able to write so many beautiful songs which the words and music go right to my heart, and my favorite of all your songs is “My Bride-to-Be.” I would like to ask you many other questions, but you would think they were too personal. I mean things like how do you keep your hair so wavy and your teeth so white and about your complexion and your eyelashes. But I am sure you must be sick and tired of reading this letter, and you have probably torn it up long ago and are wondering what kind of a silly girl could write such a letter. Well, Mr. Starr, I guess I am a silly girl all right, at least on one subject, but will let you guess what that subject is.
And now I will close this silly letter and will not even read it over to myself for fear I would think it too silly and tear it up without sending it, so please excuse all mistakes and also my handwriting as I am use to writing on a typewriter as that is what I am, Mr. Starr, a stenographer and have to work for my own living, but I know you are not the kind of a man who would look down on a girl because they had to earn their own living, so may I hope you will answer this letter with just a little note and please answer it soon as I will be sick with nervousness wondering if you are going to answer it at all.
After five weeks of hell upon earth, Hilda realized that he was not going to answer it at all.
One morning, Miss Claire Richardson’s column in the Bulletin was devoted to Roman, whom she had met and interviewed at the Minuit Club, where he was being featured. Roman, it seemed, had reluctantly consented to come to Miss Richardson’s table and talk about himself. But Miss Richardson had either failed to get much out of him or else was more interested in her own style than in what he had to say. Anyway there was not nearly enough direct quotation from Roman to satisfy his fans; moreover, the writer had evidently covered her assignment in a spirit of levity. Hilda was only one of an army of readers who felt like slapping her face.
Hilda clipped the column and squeezed it into her dresser. She did not like it, but it was about him and therefore must be saved.
On a morning a few days later, she woke up with an idea so daring that it made her tremble. It was an idea which she must immediately put out of her head. It was an impossible idea. But was it?
She said to Margaret at breakfast, “How do you suppose reporters go about it to get interviews with people?”
“What kind of people?” said Margaret.
“Actors and movie stars—people like that.”
“I should think,” said Margaret, “that it would be harder not to get them than to get them. People whose success depends on publicity want all the publicity they can get.”
“Yes, but how do the reporters make engagements with them?”
“If they have to make engagements, I imagine they do it by telephone or telegraph or the good old U.S. mails. I guess, though, that the reporters simply go to where the people are and tell them what they want. Those kind of people won’t put any obstacles in the way of seeing themselves in print, even if it’s in connection with murder.”
Well, of course Roman was not one of “those kind of people.” Yet he was of the class that can not avoid the limelight and, though undoubtedly an exception to all rules, a person whose ambition, as well as his innate courtesy, would conduce to render him “nice” to interviewers, in spite of Miss Richardson’s perfidy.
Hilda wanted very much to go to the Minuit Club and have him come to her table, but there were too many difficulties. Her one evening gown was unstylishly short. Night clubs had terrible cover charges. You required a male escort,
