Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/110



HE office door of Felix Rinderfeld, attorney-at-law, gleams in gold letters with his name and estate alone. It faces a long white hall which is on an upper floor of one of the modern office buildings on Clark Street and, upon opening the door and glancing ahead through the wide, specklessly clean window opposite, the visitor looks upon the gray, columned façade of the Cook County Courts block.

It is not the most delectable highway of downtown Chicago,—Clark Street. Michigan Avenue, with the lake front park to its east, is at once the Fifth Avenue, the Mall, the Avenue de l'Opera of Chicago, the boulevard of hotels and clubs, of jewelers and costumers, of hatters and bootmakers, of tea rooms and confectioners, of the Art Institute and Orchestra Hall. Marjorie Hale knew Michigan Avenue well from the Blackstone north. On Wabash Avenue, which lies next to the west, she knew, of course, McClurg's bookstore, Lyon and Healy's, Colby's and several other stores. On State Street she was familiar at least with the squares from Carson Pirie's to Marshall Field's; and even on Dearborn, which is mostly a man's street of commerce and contracts, she could identify a building or two; but she was almost a complete stranger to Clark Street in daytime when the theaters which occasionally drew her there at night were closed.

She passed along squares where remain many of the stiff, old and dingy structures erected in the seventies