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.