Trubus waved his hand toward the door by which Burke had entered.
"I have to make an address to our Board of Directors this afternoon," he said, "and I don't care to associate my activities nor those of the cause for which I stand with the police department. You had better carry your information to your superiors."
"But, I tell you I have the leads which will land a gang of organized procurers, if you will give me any of your help. The police are trying to do the best they can, but they have to fight district politics, saloon men, and every sort of pull against justice. Your society isn't afraid of losing its job, and it can't be fired by political influence. Why don't you spend some of your money for the cause that's alive instead of on furniture and stenographers and diamond rings!"
The cat was out of the bag.
Trubus brought his fist down with a bang which spilled grape juice on his neat piles of papers.
"Don't you dictate to me. You police are a lot of grafters, in league with the gangsters and the politicians. My society cares for the unfortunate and seeks to work its reforms by mentally and spiritually uplifting the poor. We have the support of the clergy and those people who know that the public and the poor must be brought to a spiritual understanding. Pah! Don't come around to me with your story of 'organized traffic.' That's one of the stories originated by the police to excuse their inefficiency!"
Burke's eyes flamed as he stood his ground.
"Let me tell you, Mr. Trubus, that before you and your clergy can do any good with people's souls you've got to take more care of their bodies. You've got to clean out some of the rotten tenement houses which some of your big churches own. I've seen them—breeding places for tuberculosis and drunkenness, and crime of the vilest sort. You've got to give work to the thousands of starving men and women, who are driven to crime, instead of spending millions on cathedrals and altars and statues and stained glass windows, for people who come to church in their automobiles. A lot of your churches are closed up when the neighborhood changes and only poor people attend. They sell the property to a saloonkeeper, or turn it into a moving-picture house and burn people to death in the rotten old fire-trap. And if you don't raise your hand, when I come to you fair and square, with an honest story—if you dare to order me out of here, because you've got to gab a lot of your charity drivel to a board of directors, instead of taking the interest any real man would take in something that was real and vital and eating into the very heart of New York life, I'm going to show you up, and put you out of the charity business——so help me God!"
Burke's right arm shot into the air, with the vow, and his fist clenched until the knuckles stood out ridged against the bloodless pallor of his tense skin.
Trubus looked straight into Burke's eyes, and his own gaze dropped before the white flame which was burning in them.