She handed him back about thirty photos. “All these girls were one time or another in my house,” she said.
“Can you explain how this business was worked?” Campbell asked. “Some of these girls came from Springfield, Cleveland, Denver, and such places. Did they come willingly, or how did he get hold of them?”
Sadie shook her head. “It was all horribly simple. He had special men who were always on the look−out for lonely girlsgirls who weren’t happy at home; girls who wanted a good time. They had to be pretty and young. When these men found them they either drugged them and took them by car to Sedalia, which was their clearing−post, or else they invented some story about an accident and got them to come that way. The method differed each time, but it was always a quick, simple plan that was unlikely to arouse suspicions.”
“Sedalia?” Campbell repeated.
Sadie nodded. “Every girl I spoke to had been taken there.”
Campbell reached for his phone and gave some rapid orders. “I’ll get that place looked over immediately,”
he said to Sadie. “When they got them to Sedalia, what happened then?”
Sadie flinched. “Must I talk about that?”
“I know just how you feel, but if we’re to save other girls from this business we must know all about it.”
“From what I heard, the girls were put in separate rooms and left to sleep off the drugs. When they recovered they found themselves in bed with a coloured man. It was always a coloured man. Sometimes it was a Chink, or a nigger, or even a Phillipine. They relied on the psychological shock to lower the girl’s resistance, and in most cases it was successful. Some of the girls refused, of course, and then they would beat them into submission.” Sadie shuddered. “No one knows what that means unless you’ve actually experienced it. To be beaten every hour of the day until your body is swollen and so tender that the weight of a sheet makes you scream in agony. No one can stand that, Mr. Campbell. I don’t care who it is.”