"He'd have me pinched," she insisted, doggedly. "He's got a pull with the cops. He'd sure have me sent to the Island, if I tried to shake him."
"Look here,"—again I flashed my badge—"It's gold. That means I'm the same as a captain. I've got ten times more pull than Blackie. If he gets gay, I'll lock him up. I'll plant a gun in his pocket and send him up the river for concealed weapons. You don't need to be afraid of him."
"Gee," she said, "I'd like to stay. But he'd sure get me. He's a bad one."
"He'll be a dead one," I said. "If he starts anything with a friend of mine."
I talked a few minutes more, but not till I showed her a pair of hand-cuffs, which I kept in my room by way of a curiosity, did she really believe she was safe and begin to smile again.
Having established the family, I made an excuse to go out. I came back late at night and found Benson sitting alone in front of the fire.
"She's asleep," he said.
"Must have had a lot of excitement," I replied, "to be sleepy at this hour."
Having spent all the day outdoors, tramping in the open air, my brain had cleared a little. The thing had lost its distorted proportions, had fallen into focus. I could not understand how the affair had seemed so momentous to me. Such things, I knew very well, were happening on all sides, all the time. I was sorry for Norman. He would take it seriously and that, I felt, meant days of stress and sadness. My work in the Tombs had made me realize more certainly than he could the immense chances against his helping the girl. How many futile efforts I had made at first to lend a hand to some of these unfortunate women! I had given it up in defeat. For her, even if the powers of darkness pulled her back at last, it would mean at least a little oasis of comfort and consideration in the barren desert life the gods had mapped out for her.
"There's one thing, I must say for my soul's good," Norman said. "It's a hard business, this analyzing of our motives. I'm sure I do want to save her, if I can, from being a public prostitute. But it's equally true I want her for myself. I certainly despise this cadet, Blackie—but it's also true that I'm suddenly become just ordinarily, humanly jealous of him. I don't want to pretend that I'm wholly occupied in trying to be God-like."