fashion with the police, splitting at the chin and curling up like ram's horns. He stroked both ends and watched me suspiciously. I held up my watch again. Four forty-five. The clerk stood and closed the door.
It is not a good idea, Root had said, to upset somebody whose family owns your place of employment, not to mention twenty million dollars and sixty-six acres of the North Shore of Chicago. In my mind's eye I could see Mrs. McCormick standing in her drawing room at the Ritz, lorgnette unholstered, face of stone. I could also see a trim blonde person, not reclusive, who filled the air with flying shoes and loopy smiles. I looked at my watch, looked at the door, gave the clerk a two-finger tunneler salute, and left.
The "Conservatory of the Arts and Professions" is located on the Right Bank about a block south of one of Paris's tawdrier theater districts. It consists of one part Institute of Technology and one part Museum of Inventions. Some of the inventions were housed in an adjoining Catholic church that the city of Paris had appropriated during the Revolution and rededicated, with a fine French sense of irony, to the Rule of Science.
I stopped my taxi at the corner of rue Vaucanson, mentally
kicking myself for not remembering the name of the street, and hurried past the church and into the Museum.
In Paris in 1926 fewer than half of the buildings had electric lights, but the Conservatory, under the Rule of Science, was practically ablaze with them. Edison would be pleased, I thought. I passed a Bleriot airplane under a spotlight, then a row of illuminated glass cases displaying phonographs, Bakelite radios, and one of Bell's early telephones. I went around a model of Pascal's mystical computing machine and reached the bottom of a staircase where a large permanent sign said, Théâtre des Automates. Next to it somebody had printed in very nice fourteen-point Garamond type: "American Women's Club of Paris. Mlle. Short of New Jersey. 5–6 P.M. "
A bored-looking guard waved me on, and I took the stairs two at a time, turned left at what appeared to be an enormous brass weaving loom, and entered a dark, narrow auditorium full of howling children.
Eleven
"I GIVE YOU M ISS E LSIEDALE M. S HORT !"
At the bottom of a descending rank of benches, behind a long library table and more illuminated glass cases, Elsie short was looking up at the audience and smiling broadly.
A fat middle-aged man in a red velvet coat and gray trousers stood next to her. He had small pig-like features crowded into the center of a big pink face, he was bald except for a silver bristle around his ears, and he was gesturing toward Elsie with one upturned palm, like a genial Master of Ceremonies.
In front of them both, spilling onto the floor around the table, sat at least a hundred applauding people, American Club women and dozens and dozens of children in costume—elves, fairies, polar bears, one adolescent Old Saint Nicholas.
"Miss Elsiedale Short," the fat man boomed, "of the Thomas Edison Doll Company!"
There was another round of applause, and while it was dying down I edged my way behind the last row of benches and joined a
line of what I took to be fathers with their backs against the wall.
At the speaker's table Elsie was stepping forward, smoothing the front of her dress. "A real doll," muttered the man on my left. Elsie looked across the audience from left to right and smiled again. She wasn't wearing her waterproof coat and blue trilby hat tonight. She was wearing a pink and white sheath, tight at the hips, tighter at the bust—no woman in Paris in 1926 wore a bra— and a fleur-de-lys spray on her left shoulder that must have cost Mr. Edison a pretty penny.
"That's Henri Saulnay with her," said my talkative neighbor. "He's a German."
"Boys and girls," said Elsie in a strong, carrying voice. "As Monsieur Saulnay told
It is not a good idea, Root had said, to upset somebody whose family owns your place of employment, not to mention twenty million dollars and sixty-six acres of the North Shore of Chicago. In my mind's eye I could see Mrs. McCormick standing in her drawing room at the Ritz, lorgnette unholstered, face of stone. I could also see a trim blonde person, not reclusive, who filled the air with flying shoes and loopy smiles. I looked at my watch, looked at the door, gave the clerk a two-finger tunneler salute, and left.
The "Conservatory of the Arts and Professions" is located on the Right Bank about a block south of one of Paris's tawdrier theater districts. It consists of one part Institute of Technology and one part Museum of Inventions. Some of the inventions were housed in an adjoining Catholic church that the city of Paris had appropriated during the Revolution and rededicated, with a fine French sense of irony, to the Rule of Science.
I stopped my taxi at the corner of rue Vaucanson, mentally
kicking myself for not remembering the name of the street, and hurried past the church and into the Museum.
In Paris in 1926 fewer than half of the buildings had electric lights, but the Conservatory, under the Rule of Science, was practically ablaze with them. Edison would be pleased, I thought. I passed a Bleriot airplane under a spotlight, then a row of illuminated glass cases displaying phonographs, Bakelite radios, and one of Bell's early telephones. I went around a model of Pascal's mystical computing machine and reached the bottom of a staircase where a large permanent sign said, Théâtre des Automates. Next to it somebody had printed in very nice fourteen-point Garamond type: "American Women's Club of Paris. Mlle. Short of New Jersey. 5–6 P.M. "
A bored-looking guard waved me on, and I took the stairs two at a time, turned left at what appeared to be an enormous brass weaving loom, and entered a dark, narrow auditorium full of howling children.
Eleven
"I GIVE YOU M ISS E LSIEDALE M. S HORT !"
At the bottom of a descending rank of benches, behind a long library table and more illuminated glass cases, Elsie short was looking up at the audience and smiling broadly.
A fat middle-aged man in a red velvet coat and gray trousers stood next to her. He had small pig-like features crowded into the center of a big pink face, he was bald except for a silver bristle around his ears, and he was gesturing toward Elsie with one upturned palm, like a genial Master of Ceremonies.
In front of them both, spilling onto the floor around the table, sat at least a hundred applauding people, American Club women and dozens and dozens of children in costume—elves, fairies, polar bears, one adolescent Old Saint Nicholas.
"Miss Elsiedale Short," the fat man boomed, "of the Thomas Edison Doll Company!"
There was another round of applause, and while it was dying down I edged my way behind the last row of benches and joined a
line of what I took to be fathers with their backs against the wall.
At the speaker's table Elsie was stepping forward, smoothing the front of her dress. "A real doll," muttered the man on my left. Elsie looked across the audience from left to right and smiled again. She wasn't wearing her waterproof coat and blue trilby hat tonight. She was wearing a pink and white sheath, tight at the hips, tighter at the bust—no woman in Paris in 1926 wore a bra— and a fleur-de-lys spray on her left shoulder that must have cost Mr. Edison a pretty penny.
"That's Henri Saulnay with her," said my talkative neighbor. "He's a German."
"Boys and girls," said Elsie in a strong, carrying voice. "As Monsieur Saulnay told
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