Montmartre and the beauty parlour adjoining it," began Kennedy
deliberately. "One thing, however, I want to say. Twice, now, I have
seen Dr. Harris handing out packets of drugs--once to Ike the Dropper,
agent for the police and a corrupt politician, and once to a mulatto
woman, almost white, who conducted the beauty parlour and dope joint
which I have mentioned, a friend and associate of Ike the Dropper, a
constant go-between from Ike to the corrupt person higher up.
"This woman, whom I have just mentioned, we have been seeking by use of
Bertillon's new system of the portrait parle. She has escaped, for the
time, by a very clever ruse, by changing her very face in the beauty
parlour. She is Madame Margot herself!"
Not a word was breathed by any of the little audience as they hung on
Kennedy's words.
"Why was it necessary to get Betty Blackwell out of the way?" he asked
suddenly, then without waiting for an answer, "You know and District
Attorney Carton knows. Someone was afraid of Carton and his crusade.
Someone wanted to destroy the value of that Black Book, which I now
have. The only safety lay in removing the person whose evidence would
be required in court to establish it--Betty Blackwell. And the manner?
What more natural than to use the dope fiends and the degenerates of
the Montmartre gang?"
"That's silly," interrupted Ogleby contemptuously.
"Silly? You can say that--you, the tool of that--that monster?"
It was a woman's voice that interrupted. I turned. Sybil Seymour, her
face blazing with resentment, had risen and was facing Ogleby squarely.
"You lie!" exclaimed the Silent Boss, forgetting both his silence and
his superciliousness.
The situation was tense as the girl faced him.
"Go on, Sybil," urged Clare.
"Be careful, woman," cried Dorgan roughly.
Sybil Seymour turned quickly to her new assailant. "You are the man for
whom we were all coined into dollars," she scorned,
"Dorgan--politician, man higher up! You reaped the profits through your
dirty agent, Ike the Dropper, and those over him, even the police you
controlled. Dr. Harris, Marie Margot, all are your tools--and the worst
of them all is this man Martin Ogleby!"
Dorgan's face was livid. For once in his life he was speechless rather
than silent, as the girl poured out the inside gossip of the Montmartre
which Kennedy had now stamped with the earmarks of legal proof.
She had turned from Dorgan, as if from an unclean animal and was now
facing Ogleby.
"As for you, Martin Ogleby, they call you a club-man and society
leader. Do you want to know what club I think you really belong to--you
who have involved one girl after another in the meshes of this devilish
System? You belong to the Abduction Club--that is what I would call
it--you--you libertine!"
XXVI
THE WHITE SLAVE
Carton had sprung to his feet at the direct charge and was facing
Ogleby.
"Is that true--about the Montmartre?" he demanded.
Ogleby fairly sputtered. "She lies," he almost hissed.
"Just a moment," interrupted Dorgan. "What has that to do with Miss
Blackwell, anyhow?"
Sybil Seymour did not pause.
"It is true," she reiterated. "This is what it has to do with Betty
Blackwell. Listen. He is the man who led me on, who would have done the
same to Betty Blackwell. I yielded, but she fought. They could not
conquer her--neither by drugs nor drink, nor by clothes, nor a good
time, nor force. I saw it all in the Montmartre and the beauty
parlour--all."
"Lies--all lies," hissed Ogleby, beside himself with anger.
"No, no," cried Sybil. "I do not lie. Mr. Carton and this good woman,
Miss Kendall, who is working for him, are the first people I have seen
since you, Martin Ogleby, brought me to the Montmartre, who have ever
given me a chance to become again what I was before you and your
friends got me."
"Have a care, young woman," interrupted Dorgan, recovering himself as
she proceeded. "There are laws and--"
"I don't care a rap about laws such as yours. As for gangs--that was
what you were going to say--I'd snap my fingers in the face of Ike the
Dropper himself if he were here. You could kill me, but I would tell
the truth.
"Let me tell you my case," she continued, turning in appeal to the rest
of us, "the case of a poor girl in a small city near New York, who
liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an automobile,
theatres, excitement, bright lights, night life. I liked them. He knew
that. He led me on, made me like him. And when I began to show the
strain of the pace--we all show it more than the men--he cast me aside,
like a squeezed-out lemon."
Sybil Seymour was talking rapidly, but she was not hysterical.
"Already you know Betty Blackwell's story--part of it," she hurried on.
"Miss Kendall has told me--how she was bribed to disappear. But beyond
that--what?"
For a moment she paused. No one said a word. Here at last was the one
person who held the key to the mystery.
"She did disappear. She kept her word. At last she had money, the one
thing she had longed for. At last she was able to gratify those desires
to play the fashionable lady which her family had always felt. What
more natural, then, than while she must keep in hiding to make one
visit to the beauty parlour to which so many society women
went--Margot's? It was there that she went on the day that she
disappeared."
We were hanging breathlessly now on the words of the girl as she
untangled the sordid story.
"And then?" prompted Kennedy.
"Then came into play another arm of the System," she replied. "They
tried to make sure that she would disappear. They tried the same arts
on her that they had on me--this man and the gang about him. He played
on her love of beauty and Madame Margot helped him. He used the
Montmartre and the Futurist to fascinate her, but still she was not
his. She let herself drift along, perhaps because she knew that her
family was every bit the equal socially of his own. Madame Margot tried
drugs; first the doped cigarette, then drugs that had to be forced on
her. She kept her in that joint for days by force; and there where I
went for relief day after day from my own bitter thoughts I saw her, in
that hell which Miss Kendall now by her evidence will close forever.
Still she would not yield.
"I saw it all. Maybe you will say I was jealous because I had lost him.
I was not. I hated him. You do not know how close hate can be to love
in the heart of a woman. I could not help it. I had to write a letter
that might save her.
"Miss Kendall has told me about the typewritten letters; how you,
Professor Kennedy, traced them to the Montmartre. I wrote them, I
admit, for these people. I wrote that stuff about drugs for Dr. Harris.
And I wrote the first letter of all to the District Attorney. I wrote
it for myself and signed it as I am--God forgive me--'An Outcast.'"
The poor girl, overwrought by the strain of the confession that laid
bare her very soul, sank back in her chair and cried, as Miss Kendall
gently tried to soothe her.
Dorgan and Ogleby listened sullenly. Never in their lives had they
dreamed of such a situation as this.
There was no air of triumph about Kennedy now over the confession,
which with the aid of Miss Kendall, he had staged so effectively.
Rather it was a spirit of earnestness, of retribution, justice.
"You know all this?" he inquired gently of the girl.
"I saw it," she said simply, raising her bowed head.
Dorgan had been doing some quick thinking. He leaned over and whispered
quickly to Ogleby.
"Why was she not discovered then when these detectives broke into the
private house--an act which they themselves will have to answer for
when the time comes?" demanded Ogleby.
It seemed as if the mere sound of his voice roused the girl.
"Because it was dangerous to keep her there any longer," she replied.
"I heard the talk about the hotel, the rumour that someone was using
this new French detective scheme. I heard them blame the District
Attorney--who was clever enough to have others working on the case whom
you did not know. While you were watching his officers, Mr. Kennedy and
Miss Kendall were gathering evidence almost under your very eyes.
"But you were panic-stricken. You and your agents wanted to remove the
danger of discovery. Dr. Harris and Marie Margot had a plan which you
grasped at eagerly. There was Ike the Dropper, that scoundrel who lives
on women. Between them you would spirit her away. You were glad to have
them do it, little realizing that, with every step, they had you
involved deeper and worse. You forgot everything, all honour and
manhood in your panic; you were ready to consent, to urge any course
that would relieve you--and you have taken the course that involves you
worse than any other."
"Who will believe a story like that?" demanded Ogleby. "What are
you--according to your own confession? Am I to be charged with
everything this gang, as you call it, does? You are their agent,
perhaps working for this blackmailing crew. But I tell you, I will
fight, I will not be blackened by--"
Sybil laughed, half hysterically.
"Blackened?" she repeated. "You who would put this thing all off on
others who worked for you, who played on your vices and passions, not
because you were weak, but because you thought you were above the law!
"You did not care what became of that girl, so long as she was where
she could not accuse you. You left her to that gang, to Ike, to Marie,
to Harris." She paused a moment, and flashed a quick glance of scorn at
him. "Do you want to know what has become of her, what you are
responsible for?
"I will tell you. They had other ideas than just getting her out of the
way of your selfish career. They are in this life for money. Betty
Blackwell to them was a marketable article, a piece of merchandise in
the terrible traffic which they carry on. If she had been yielding,
like the rest of us, she might now be apparently free, yet held by a
bondage as powerful and unescapable as if it were of iron, a life from
which she could not escape. But she was not yielding. They would break
her. Perhaps you have tried to ease your conscience, if you have any,
by the thought that it is they, not you, who have her hidden away
somewhere now. You cannot escape that way; it was you who made her, who
made others of us, what we are."
"Let her rave, Ogleby," sneered Dorgan.
"Yes--raving, that's it," echoed Ogleby. But his expression belied him.
"There it is," she continued. "You have not even an opinion of your
own. You repeat even the remarks of others. They have you in their
power. You have put yourself there."
"All very pretty," remarked Dorgan with biting sarcasm. "All very
cleverly thought out. So nice here! Wait until you have to tell that
story in court. You know the first rule of equity? Do you go into court
with clean hands? There is a day of reckoning coming to you, young
woman, and to these other meddlers here--whether they are playing
politics or meddling just because they are old-maidish busy-bodies."
She was facing the politician with burning cheeks.
"You," she scorned, "belong to an age that is passing away. You cannot
understand these people like Miss Kendall, like Mr. Carton, who cannot
be bought and controlled like your other creatures. You do not know how
the underworld can turn on the upperworld. You would not pull us
up--you shoved us down deeper, in your greed. But if we go down, we
shall drag you, too. What have we to lose? You and your creatures, like
Martin Ogleby, have taken everything from us. We--"
"Come, Ogleby," interposed Dorgan, deliberately turning his back on her
and slowly placing his hat on his half-bald head. "We are indebted to
Professor Kennedy for a pleasant entertainment. When he has another
show equally original we trust he will not forget the first-nighters
who have enjoyed this farce."
Dorgan had reached the door and had his hand on the knob. I had
expected Kennedy to reply. But he said nothing. Instead his hand stole
along the edge of the table beside which he was standing.
"Good-night," bowed Dorgan with mock solemnity. "Thank you for laying
the cards on the table. We shall know how to play--"
Dorgan cut the words short.
Kennedy had touched the button of an electric attachment which was
under the table by which he could lock every door and window of the
laboratory instantly and silently.
"Well?" demanded Dorgan fiercely, though there was a tremble in his
voice that had never been heard before.
"Where is Betty Blackwell?" demanded Craig, turning to Sybil Seymour.
"Where did they take her?"
We hung breathlessly on the answer. Was she being held as a white slave
in some obscure den? I knew that that did not mean that she was
necessarily imprisoned behind locked doors and barred windows, although
even that might be the case. I knew that the restraint might be just as
effective, even though it was not actually or wholly physical.
An ordinary girl, I reasoned, with little knowledge of her rights or of
the powers which she might call to her aid if she knew how to summon
them, might she not be so hemmed in by the forces into whose hands she
had fallen as to be practically held in bonds which she could not break?
Here was Sybil herself! Once she had been like Betty Blackwell. Indeed,
when she seemed to have every chance to escape she did not. She knew
how she could be pursued, hounded at every turn, forced back, and her
only course was to sink deeper into the life. The thought of what might
be accomplished by drugs startled me.
Clare bent over the poor girl reassuringly. What was it that seemed to
freeze her tongue now? Was it still some vestige of the old fear under
which she had been held so long? Clare strove, although we could not
hear what she was saying, to calm her.
At last Sybil raised her head, with a wild cry, as if she were sealing
her own doom.
"It was Ike. He kept us all in terror. Oh, if he hears he will kill
me," she blurted out.
"Where did he take her?" asked Clare.
She had broken down the girl's last fear.
"To that place on the West Side--that black and tan joint, where Marie
Margot came from before the gang took her in."
"Carton," called Kennedy. "You and Walter will take Miss Kendall and
Miss Seymour. Let me see. Dorgan, Ogleby, and myself will ride in the
taxicab."
Carton was toying ostentatiously with a police whistle as Dorgan
hesitated, then entered the cab.
I think at the joint, as we pulled up with a rush after our wild ride
downtown, they must have thought that a party of revellers had dropped
in to see the sights. It was perhaps just as well that they did, for
there was no alarm at first.
As we entered the black and tan joint, I took another long look at its
forbidding exterior. Below, it was a saloon and dance hall; above, it
was a "hotel." It was weatherbeaten, dirty, and unsightly, without,
except for the entrance; unsanitary, ramshackle, within, except for the
tawdry decorations. At every window were awnings and all were down,
although it was on the shady side of the street in the daytime and it
was now getting late. That was the mute sign post to the initiated of
the character of the place.
Instead of turning downstairs where we had gone on our other visit,
Kennedy led the way up through a door that read, "Hotel
Entrance--Office."
A clerk at a desk in a little alcove on the second floor mechanically
pushed out a register at us, then seeming to sense trouble, pulled it
back quickly and with his foot gave a sharp kick at the door of a
little safe, locking the combination.
"I'm looking for someone," was all Kennedy said. "This is the District
Attorney. We'll go through--"
"Yes, you will!"
It was Ike the Dropper. He had heard the commotion, and, seeing ladies,
came to the conclusion that it was not a police plainclothes raid, but
some new game of the reformers.
He stopped short in amazement at the sight of Dorgan and Ogleby.
"Well--I'll be--"
"Carton! Walter!" shouted Kennedy. "Take care of him. Watch out for a
knife or gun. He's soft, though. Carton--the whistle!"
Our struggle with the redoubtable Ike was short and quickly over.
Sullen, and with torn clothes and bleeding face, we held him until the
policeman arrived, and turned him over to the law.
At a room on the same floor Craig knocked.
"Come in," answered a woman's voice.
He pushed open the door. There was the woman who had fled so
precipitately from the dope joint.
Evidently she did not recognize us. "You are under arrest," announced
Kennedy.
The blonde woman laughed mockingly.
"Under arrest? For what?"
"You are Marie Margot. Never mind about your alias. All the arts of
your employees and Dr. Harris himself cannot change you so that I
cannot recognize you. You may feel safe from the portrait parle, but
there are other means of detection that you never dreamed of. Where is
Betty Blackwell? Marie, it's all off!"
All the brazen assurance with which she had met us was gone. She looked
from one to the other and read that it was the end. With a shriek, she
suddenly darted past us, out of the door. Down the hall was Ike the
Dropper with the policeman and Carton. Beside her was a stairway
leading to the upper floors. She chose the stairs.
Following Kennedy we hurried through the hotel, from one dirty room to
another, with their loose and creaking floors, rotten and filthy,
sagging as we walked, covered with matting that was rotting away. Damp
and unventilated, the air was heavy and filled with foul odours of
tobacco, perfumery, and cheap disinfectants. There seemed to have been
no attempt to keep the place clean.
The rooms were small and separated by thin partitions through which
conversations in even low tones could be heard. The furniture was cheap
and worn with constant use.
Downstairs we could hear the uproar as the news spread that the
District Attorney was raiding the place. As fast as they could the
sordid crowd in the dance hall and cabaret was disappearing. Now and
then we could hear a door bang, a hasty conference, and then silence as
some of the inmates realized that upstairs all escape was cut off.
On the top floor we came to a door, locked and bolted. With all the
force that he could gather in the narrow hall, Kennedy catapulted
himself against it. It yielded in its rottenness with a crash.
A woman, in all her finery, lay across the foot of a bed, a formless
heap. Kennedy turned her over. It was Marie, motionless, but still
breathing faintly. In an armchair, with his hands hanging limply down
almost to the floor, his head sagging forward on his chest, sprawled
Harris.
Kennedy picked up a little silver receptacle on the floor where it lay
near his right hand. It was nearly empty, but as he looked from it
quickly to the two insensible figures before us he muttered: "Morphine.
They have robbed the law of its punishment."
He bent over the suicides, but it was too late to do anything for them.
They had paid the price.
"My heavens!" he exclaimed suddenly, as a thought flashed over his
mind. "I hope they have not carried the secret of Betty Blackwell with
them to the grave. Where is Miss Kendall?"
Down the hall, cut off from the rest of the hotel into a sort of
private suite, Clare had entered one of the rooms and was bending over
a pale, wan shadow of a girl, tossing restlessly on a bed. The room was
scantily furnished with a dilapidated bureau in one corner and a
rickety washstand equipped with a dirty washbowl and pitcher. A few
cheap chromos on the walls were the only decorations, and a small badly
soiled rug covered a floor innocent for many years of soap.
I looked sharply at the girl lying before us. Somehow it did not occur
to me who she was. She was so worn that anyone might safely have
transported her through the streets and never have been questioned, in
spite of the fact that every paper in the country which prints pictures
had published her photograph, not once but many times.
It was Betty Blackwell at last, struggling against the drugs that had
been forced on her, half conscious, but with one firm and acute feeling
left--resistance to the end.
Kennedy had dropped on his knees before her and was examining her
closely.
"Open the windows--more air," he ordered. "Walter, see if you can find
some ice water and a little stimulant."
While Craig was taking such restorative measures as were possible on
the spur of the moment, Miss Kendall gently massaged her head and hands.
She seemed to understand that she was in the hands of friends, and
though she did not know us her mute look of thanks was touching.
"Don't get excited, my dear," breathed Miss Kendall into her ear. "You
will be all right soon."
As the wronged girl relaxed from her constant tension of watching, it
seemed as if she fell into a stupor. Now and then she moaned feebly,
and words, half-formed, seemed to come to her lips only to die away.
Suddenly she seemed to have a vision more vivid than the rest.
"No--no--Mr. Ogleby--leave me. Where--my mother--oh, where is mother?"
she cried hysterically, sitting bolt upright and staring at us without
seeing us.
Kennedy passed the broad palm of his hand over her forehead and
murmured, "There, there, you are all right now." Then he added to us:
"I did not send for her mother because I wasn't sure that we might find
her even as well as this. Will someone find Carton? Get the address and
send a messenger for Mrs. Blackwell."
Sybil was on her knees by the bedside of the girl, holding Betty's hand
in both of her own.
"You poor, poor girl," she cried softly. "It is--dreadful."
She had sunk her head into the worn and dirty covers of the bed.
Kennedy reached over and took hold of her arm. "She will be all right,
soon," he said reassuringly. "Miss Kendall will take good care of her."
As we descended the stairs, we could see Carton at the foot. A patrol
wagon had been backed up to the curb in front and the inmates of the
place were being taken out, protesting violently at being detained.
Further down the hall, by the "office," Dorgan and Ogleby were
storming, protesting that "influence" would "break" everyone concerned,
from Carton down to the innocent patrolmen.
Kennedy listened a moment, then turned to Clare Kendall.
"I will leave Miss Blackwell in your care," he said quietly. "It is on
her we must rely to prove the contents of the Black Book."
Clare nodded, as, with a clang, Carton drove off with his prisoners to
see them safely entered on the "blotter."
"Our work is over," remarked Kennedy, turning again to Miss Kendall, in
a tone as if he might have said more, but refrained.
Looking Craig frankly in the eye, she extended her hand in that same
cordial straight-arm shake with which she had first greeted us, and
added, "But not the memory of this fight we have won."
XXVII
THE ELECTION NIGHT
It was election night. Kennedy and Carton had arranged between them
that we were all to receive the returns at the headquarters of the
Reform League, where one of the papers which was particularly
interested, had installed several special wires.
The polls had scarcely closed when Kennedy and I, who had voted early,
if not often, in spite of our strenuous day, hastened up to the
headquarters. Already it was a scene of activity.
The first election district had come in, one on the lower East Side,
which was a stronghold of Dorgan, where the count could be made
quickly, for there were no split tickets there. Dorgan had drawn first
blood.
"I hope it isn't an omen," smiled Carton, like a good sport.
Kennedy smiled quietly.
We looked about, but Miss Ashton was not there. I wondered why not and
where she was.
The first returns had scarcely begun to filter in, though, when Craig
leaned over and whispered to me to go out and find her, either at her
home, or if not there, at a woman's club of which she was one of the
leading members.
I found her at home and sent up my card. She had apparently lost
interest in the election and it was with difficulty that I could
persuade her to accompany me to the League headquarters. However, I
argued the case with what ability I had and finally she consented.
The other members of the Ashton family had monopolized the cars and we
were obliged to take a taxicab. As our driver threaded his way slowly
and carefully through the thronged streets it gave us a splendid chance
to see some of the enthusiasm. I think it did Margaret Ashton good,
too, to get out, instead of brooding over the events of the past few
days, as she had seen them. Her heightened colour made her more
attractive than ever.
The excitement of any other night in the year paled to insignificance
before this.