There was a minute’s further exchange of thanks and congratulations. Then Thorne continued:
“There’s a particular situation I want you to take care of. I believe in the need of pleasure as much as any man. But the providing of pleasure in this city has become a vast business. I’m not referring to the theaters; I’m thinking of the restaurants, roof-gardens, dancing places, things like that—high and low. And I’m thinking especially of the swellest places, and of some of the presumably most respectable places. These establishments have bred a new variety of specialists, astute men, astute women, who entangle and victimize the pleasure-seekers. Especially since women began to go about so freely to the dancing places, and it became so easy to make acquaintances, there have developed such opportunities—God, if the public only guessed a tenth of what is dribbling in to us!—and even we never get rumors of a tenth of what actually happens. But you know this situation better than I do.”
“I’ve had to learn something about it,” said Clifford.
“I want the facts. I want the situation cleaned out. You’ve got a free hand—use as many men as you like—follow your own plans.”
“I’ll be on the job at once,” said Clifford.
“Good stuff!” cried Thome enthusiastically. “And if you succeed—and I know you will—it will be a big thing for the Department, a big thing for me, and we’ll try to make it a big thing for you!”
This new interest so promptly and exactly fitted the sudden emptiness in Clifford’s life that almost without thinking he was impelled to ask, “Has anything happened, Chief, to cause you to make me this offer just now?”
Thorne regarded Clifford with a curious, thoughtful air. “I wonder if I should tell you,” he said slowly; and then: “Well, the fact is, Clifford, I have been holding a little something back from you.”
“Something about what, Chief?”
“About you—and a woman.”