"They would." He sipped his drink. "She gave me rather a funny feeling. It sounds so melodramatic, but she's the first woman I ever saw who made me feel that she was completely and frighteningly evil. It's a sort of psychic feeling, and I got it all by myself."
"You're not kidding. She can be frightening."
"I can see her carrying a whip in a white-slave trading post, or running a baby farm and strangling the little bastards and burying them in the back yard."
Avalon laughed.
"You mightn't be so far wrong. She's been around town for years, but nobody seems to know much about her background before that. She may have done all those things before she found a safer way of making the same money."
Simon brooded for a little while.
"And yet," he said, "the waiter was telling me about all the public-spirited work she does for the sailors."
"You mean Cookie's Canteen?... Yes, she makes great character with that."
"Is it one of those Seamen's Missions?"
"No, it's all her own. She hands out coffee and coke and sandwiches, and there's a juke box and hostesses and entertainment."