Virginia Brooks

“ That night John Boland had a strange vision. He saw an eternity of pain and everlasting darkness. Through it the nightmare of his past life in strangely terrifying pictures passed before his mind.
Scenes of his boyhood, the panorama of his young manhood, pictures of his battle for success against overwhelming forces in the great city. These pictures returned again and again, vivid in their relief. ”

“ My friends, I need not tell you that such a trial would fill the newspapers with what they call ‘exposures’ of vice conditions that would be calamitous. You all agree with me that vice is a terrible thing. We know—none better, as our discussions have indicated—how great this evil is in our city. But there is something more menacing than vice,—namely, an ill-controlled and hysterical anti-vice crusade, rushing on and intoxicating itself with its own sensations, and shaking the business fabric of the city. ”

“ Having forfeited by their deeds the thing that made them men, the three shrunk to the moral stature of animals. Boland was the tiger, brooding over the city with yellow eyes, seeking whom he might devour. Druce was the wolf; cunning, ruthless, prowling. Anson was the mastiff; savage, brutal, given to wild 206 bursts of rending passion. Love of power lashed Boland to his crimes; lechery prompted Druce in his prowlings; and whisky was the fire that smouldered under Anson’s brutalities. ”

“ The screaming headline is a mental cocktail. Bellowed forth by a trombone-lunged newsboy, it crashes against the eye, the ear and the brain simultaneously. It whips up tired nerves. It keys the crowd to the keen tension necessary for the doing of the city’s business. And the crowd likes it. Fed hourly on mental stimulants, it becomes a slave to its newspapers.
On the morning after Mary Randall’s dramatic exit from her uncle’s mansion Chicago awoke and clutched at the morning papers with all the eagerness of a drunkard 116 reaching for his dram. ”

“ She was ambitious, too, and Millville did not please her. Patience, no less imaginative, perhaps, possessed a stronger hold upon herself. 29 She admired her daring sister, but she was sensible of the dangers of such daring and did not imitate her. She possessed the great gift of contentedness. It colored all her thoughts, created pleasant places for her in what, to Elsie, seemed a desolate life; it made Millville not only a bearable but even a happy place to live in. Millville understood Patience and loved her; Elsie, being less understandable, was less popular. ”

“ Beyond the veranda in a darkened drawing-room Mary Randall’s aunt had been resting and had heard this conversation. She rose and went softly away and out to a pergola where she found her husband smoking a cigar.
“Lucius,” she said. “That young newspaper man who has been out here to see Mary is here again. They are talking in the veranda, settling all the problems of Chicago!”
Lucius Randall blew a cloud of smoke. “Well, my dear, that is the only way this old world gets ahead, for each generation to tackle its problems anew.”
“I believe that young man likes Mary.”
“Many young men do.” ”

“ They sink into their seats and wait, contemptuous of their escorts, and yet pitifully dependent upon them. For without the escorts they cannot enter the Cafe Sinister. That is a tribute which the rulers of the tenderloin, through them, pays tribute to the majesty of the law.
A group of hardened rounders follows. These are men to whom the Cafe Sinister and the district have become a habit. They bring with them women of their own kind—women who, through years of dissipation, have still, like misers, managed to hoard some trace of bloom. They drink deeply, for the men are spenders. ”

“ He did not notice the actions of the stenographer as he dictated:
“I, John Boland, am a business man. I stand on my record. I defy Miss Mary Randall—”
In pausing to formulate his thoughts, he became conscious that Miss Masters had not been taking his dictation; that she had laid an envelope on his desk directly in front of where he usually sat, and that she was putting on her hat.
“Here, hold on!” he cried peremptorily. “What does this mean, Miss Masters?”
“It means, Mr. Boland,” she replied quietly, as she adjusted a hat pin, “that I have resigned. Good day.” ”

“ The Cafe Sinister is not an institution peculiar to Chicago. Every great city in America possesses one. It is the place through which recruits are won to the underworld. It is the entrance to the labyrinth where lost souls wander. Viewed from its portal it is the Palace of Pleasure; seen from behind, 205 through those haggard eyes from which vice has torn away the illusions of innocence, it is the Saddest Place in the World.
Druce owned the Cafe Sinister with Carter Anson; their lease was written for them by John Boland. Thus the upper world and the under were leagued for its maintenance. ”

“ A thoughtful young girl, healthy, cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil, moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside her veneer of false education. ”

“ In the evenings she had the women habitues of the place in her rooms, talking to them as if she were one of their own kind and learning from them the squalid stories of their downfall and the part Druce and Anson had played in it. Anna was not in sight during any of these interviews. She was seated at the little table with the dictagraph at her ear, her fountain 245 pen in her hand and her stenographer’s notebook before her. Nothing that was said escaped her. ”

“ Mary Randall found herself standing, as all who work for those who sin and suffer must often stand, baffled by evil’s resistance. Saddened by somewhat of a divine sadness, Mary went across to the rendezvous where her faithful Anna awaited her and left the field.
Harvey Spencer came to her downtown office early next day. He found her surrounded by her strongest allies, already in conference as to the best means of pursuing their crusade which had aroused Chicago with the startling news of The Raid of Mary Randall on the Cafe Sinister, headlined in the morning newspapers. ”

“ Elsie burst into a flood of tears.
“I know you don’t believe it,” said Lou gently. “It’s hard for anyone who is decent to believe that men can fall so low. Why, nobody believes it! The men who run the city government don’t believe it, the law makers don’t believe it, the vice commission, doesn’t believe it. The only people who believe it are 226 the people who, at their own bitter cost, know it—and this girl Mary Randall.” ”

“ They are the crowd from the street,—the thief with his girl pal, eager to spend the plunder of their last successful exploit; the big corporation’s entertainer, out to show a party of country customers the sights of a great city; the visitor from afar, lonely and seeking excitement; the man about town, the respectable woman who with a trusted male confidant seeks shady and clandestine amusement; college students with unspoiled appetites off for a lark; women of the district still new enough to the life of vice to find pleasure in its excitements ”

“ Elsie did not try to talk to him. She saw that he was beyond that. She took some money from the table and went out again to buy the cigarettes and food. When she returned Druce refused to eat. He took up the bottle of absinthe and drank from it, swallowing the burning liquid with animal-like gulps that made Elsie shudder.
“You’ll kill yourself,” said Elsie. “Take some of this milk.”
“Mind your own damn business,” returned Druce, hoarsely. “You stick to milk. I’ll stick to absinthe.” ”

“ Grogan had accomplished the purpose for which the elder Boland had despatched him to Millville—that of disentangling Harry from his romance—but what he had seen of Patience Welcome had led him to dislike his task.
Harry had no sooner promised to drive back to Chicago in the night than he was assailed with yearning to see the girl again. Each occupied himself with his own thoughts. Dusk descended on the village. They had reached the corner of the street that led to their hotel when they were arrested by a maudlin voice. ”

“ She began fastening on her hat to conceal her emotion.
“I’m going to Chicago,” she muttered, “just as soon as I am able. Nothing there can be much worse than being compelled to work in Millville under you. Good gracious,” she added maliciously, after giving him a thorough inspection, “it’s no use to stand here arguing with you.”
With this taunt Miss Elsie gave her hat a final adjustment, then, leaving Mr. Hiram Kemble speechless with rage and injured dignity, she walked out of the factory door. ”

“ A young girl housed in a poor tenement, ill-lighted, poorly heated, badly ventilated, fed and clothed insufficiently—see to it that she hears foul language, and witnesses drunkenness and quarrelling—then you have the condition that produces the delinquent city girl.”
“We are attacking all those evils,” said Ambrose. “The public conscience is rising against them. I predict the time when it will be regarded as great a disgrace for a city to possess a ‘back of the yards,’ a ghetto or a slum tenement district as it is now to have a district organized for the exploitation of women. ”

“ It was in Illinois that Abraham Lincoln—a Southerner, Kentucky born—threw down the gage in his famous Bloomington speech in the matter of buying and selling human beings as slaves. It is in Illinois—in spite of much disgrace which the State’s fair name has had forced upon it—that men and women have enlisted for life to fight in the battle against buying and selling white girls, to fight against that special dealing in “live stock” actually known to have gone on for years, 362 which is Chicago’s special shame as a distributing center. ”

“ Grogan broke off abruptly. “Say, didn’t that fat fellow who was going to be a detective, the fellow who nearly killed me riding on his grocery wagon, didn’t he know anything?”
“He’s left Millville, too.”
“What!” exclaimed Grogan incredulously. “Do you mean to say a bunch like that can drop out of a town like Millville without anyone knowing where they’ve gone?”
“I’m not telling you. The facts speak for themselves,” said Harry.
Both men were silent.
“Mike,” said young Boland suddenly.
“Yes,” responded Grogan. ”

“ The girl was startled, “I—why—I?” she hesitated.
“Yes—yes,” said Harry, “do you know her?”
The girl still hesitated and Grogan broke in.
“You’re a woman, Miss Masters,” he said, “you ought to know all the feminine quirks. Now it’s up to you. Who’s Mary Randall?”
“Mary Randall is a wealthy girl,” said Miss Masters calmly. “She has grown weary of 159 the foolish methods you men have employed in attacking the vice problem. Convinced of your total incompetence she has started out really to do something.”
“What does she want?” snorted John Boland. ”

“ You are Harry Boland, only son of the richest and most powerful man in Chicago. I am Patience Welcome, daughter of a broken inventor, tenant in a cottage which you own, where I cannot pay the rent. Can there be anything in common between us? ”

“ As head of the Electric Trust Boland was compelled to be at once a financier and a politician. The faculties for success in both fields are closely allied; in both Boland was eminently triumphant. Sitting in his office day after day, unmoved by events that might have disturbed other men and unstirred by emotions that might have turned other men from their paths, he looked out over the city and “played his game” with all the cold impassiveness 166 of a gambler operating an infallible system in roulette. ”

“ The girl grasped Druce frantically.
“Tell me she lied,” she cried, “or I’ll go crazy. Tell me she lied.”
“Yes, she lied,” answered Druce glibly. “See here, kid, it’s about time you began helping to support the family.”
Elsie dried her tears. “I’m—I’m ready,” she said. “I’ve practiced my songs—”
“O, the songs,” said Druce. “That isn’t all.”
“What do you mean, Martin?”
“Why—don’t be so stand-offish. When a man offers to buy you a bottle of wine, let him.”
“Martin!”
Druce stopped her sharply. “Now don’t begin that Millville Sunday school stuff,” he said. “This is business.” ”

“ By insuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not, indeed, have abolished prostitution, which is more than an economic phenomenon, but we shall more effectually check the white slave trader than by the most Draconic legislation the most imaginative vice crusader ever devised. ”

“ Druce laughed. He felt that he was on familiar ground with this girl. There was that in her manner that indicated the wisdom of the demi-monde. He thought he had placed her.
“You’re wise, eh?” he repeated. The girl had maneuvered to place a table between them. He leaned against the table and placed a hand on hers.
“Why does a fine looker like you spend her life pounding a typewriter?”
“Would you advise a change?”
“You could make a hundred a week in the cabarets,” declared Druce admiringly.
“Perhaps,” replied Miss Masters. She picked up her notebook and started for the inner office. ”