“Isn’t there someone here in this group of girls who has seen the light tonight,” he inquired. “Won’t someone among you step out here and take my hand and get right with her soul again?”
“I’ll say I will,” Jimmy heard Natalie Nugent, the girl with the pallor and the green earrings, say as she stood up and walked toward “Billy” Williams who gripped her outstretched hand and directed her to a position alongside him. The press agent looked at the other girls and noticed that they were watching her with fascinated interest. Somehow he couldn’t quite grasp what it all meant.
“God bless you, sister,” the evangelist shouted. “Won’t some of your friends join you?” He plunged again into the vernacular, choosing, as always, the effective moment. “It’s your cue, girls,” he pleaded. “The curtain’s up and the call boy is knocking at the door of your hearts. Don’t delay. You can’t tell what moment the Great Stage Manager will ring down for the last time. It may be tonight. It may be tomorrow. Don’t be caught unprepared. It’s a blessed opportunity, girls. Don’t pass it up. For mother’s sake, girls, for mother’s sake.”
Three other girls got up now and came forward. Jimmy gave an audible gasp of amazement. A fifth and a sixth moved into place beside the others and then Lolita Murphy stood up, hesitated for just a moment, caught “Billy” Williams’ warm human smile and stepped briskly forward. A half dozen others followed. The remainder sat with bowed heads. Those who had left their places stood in a little circle by themselves, clustered directly about the beaming evangelist. He made a last plea for converts to the vast audience and a stray dozen or more men and women, whose moral courage had not been quite strong enough to force a decision at the beginning, bobbed up here and there and moved toward the platform. There was a momentary pause and then the preacher spoke again.
“My friends,” he said, “a most remarkable event has occurred here tonight. Perhaps some of you here near the front have surmised what it is, but I am sure that the great majority of you have not grasped its significance. My efforts tonight have been blessed by an achievement of which I am extremely proud. Thirteen members of a theatrical company now appearing in this city—a company presenting a conglomeration bearing the idiotic title of ‘Keep Moving’—thirteen lovely young women have been rescued from the insidious temptations that lurk behind the blinding glare of the footlights and have come out here in the open and made a pledge to get back into the old, simple ways of living. It’s the most wonderful thing that has happened since I began my campaign, and while these brave and earnest souls are here with us let us all join in a prayer that they may be steadfast in their new aim and that their example may be a shining one to thousands of others in this great city. Let us pray.”
When the great throng arose after the prayer to sing the final hymn Jimmy Martin edged out of his seat and slipped unobtrusively up one of the aisles and out into the chill evening air. He was dazed and bewildered, but he had presence of mind enough to hail a taxicab and direct the chauffeur to drive him to his hotel. He had an idea that pictures of the fair converts would be in demand and he wanted to be on hand when the bright young gentlemen of the press put in an appearance.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chester Bartlett was not given to enthusiasm, but he felt impelled to congratulate Jimmy after glancing over the morning papers the next day and making a mental inventory of the net results of the press agent’s Sunday evening “plant.” The story leaped out of the front page of every journal in town and dwarfed, by comparison, the accounts of a super-heated debate in the United States Senate on disarmament, of a great strike which industrially paralyzed Great Britain from end to end and of a volcanic eruption in a far-flung island of the Pacific which claimed 8,000 human lives as its toll.
The “feature writers” who covered the “Billy” Williams’ meetings had figuratively and literally turned themselves loose on the proceedings and had written stories with a heart-throb in every sentence and a tear in at least every other line. They had embellished and embroidered the actual incidents so effectively that even Bartlett himself, case-hardened cynic that he was, found himself growing a bit sentimental when he read the story in the first paper to hand. The narratives were all adorned with photographs of the “Keep-Moving” beauties and the name of that blithesome musical comedy figured extensively in all of them. Bartlett particularly liked the headline in the Journal: