He recounted the dialogue. “She’s got that Lugger pistol and seems to me, boys, she’s got the game. It’s worse than Pittsburg. Called me a religious crank. Anyhow she’s got us, got the grub under her thumb unless we make out with the rice and truck the Chinks feed on.”
“I can’t make it out,” said George. “I’d have sworn by the look we got at her, through the glass, that she was a prisoner with those scamps. D’y’ remember the way she carried on, went and threw herself down on the ground with her face hidden in her arm?”
“Seems to me,” said Hank, “we’ve been reading into the situation more than was in it. She was no prisoner. She was one of them—daughter most likely of that Jew woman I hauled off you—well, I wish we’d left her alone—and to think of the size of her sitting up and crowing like that.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said George, “it’s the day of the flapper. She most likely was running that show. It’s part of the new world—the millennium that was to come after the war!”
Candon alone said nothing. The thing had hit him even harder than Hank. The knight errant in him was flattened out, at least for the moment. He remembered the cat he had released from the trap and how it had clawed him—but it had taken milk from his hand immediately after and become his friend, whereas this creature—! Then it came to him out of his own mind—for Hank’s words had produced little effect on him—that the truth was he had released her from no trap. She was part and parcel with those scoundrels, a vicious girl made vicious no doubt from bad association. This conviction suddenly coming to his mind produced an uplift.
“Boys,” said B. C. suddenly, “we’ll tame her. There’s something moving in this more than we can see. Anyhow, we’ve got her away from those ginks to start with.”
“That’s true,” said Hank, his mind taking suddenly the colour of Candon’s. But George was of rougher stuff than these idealists. He went to the skylight and cautiously tried to peep, but could see nothing, then he listened but could hear nothing. He came back to the others.
“She’s lying down, most likely, can’t see her or hear her—it’s all very well talking of taming—what do you think this show is? I didn’t start out to tame girls, don’t know how to begin, either,—I know, it’s as much my fault as yours—we shouldn’t have mixed up in the business—and I tell you we are in a tight place. That crowd will swear anything against us and she’ll back them. She talked of the police. That’s just so, all these white slavers and dope sellers and contrabanders are hand in glove with the police. They couldn’t do their business else; we should have left them alone.”
“Now that’s clean wrong,” said Hank. “Doesn’t matter a rap if the girl’s a tough, we saved her, anyhow. We did the right thing and she can’t make it wrong by being wrong herself.”