Joyce Mills did not go to Naperville. She went instead to a drug store and then to a men’s furnishing store. After that she went into a barber shop and got a hair-cut.
As night began to fall upon the city, she took a car on Madison Street and went west. She dismounted at Ashland Boulevard and walked slowly toward the south.
CHAPTER XXII
STARTLING TRANSFORMATIONS
Some twenty blocks from the shack, in a south-westerly direction, well out of the city’s business section, and just off a broad boulevard, there was a club. This was a very unusual club. Entrance was by card. The man at the door was old and very wise. He had lived in Sicily in the days of the Mafia.
The place went by the name of the “Seventy Club.” It is not certainly known what the “seventy” stood for. There are those who said it was the club of seventy thieves. Others insisted that there were more than seventy members and that not all were thieves. Be that as it may, the police held no cards of admission, and were granted entrance only when accompanied by search warrants.
On several occasions the police had entered. Always they had found no cause for complaint. At the front of the place was a lobby and reading room; at the back, pool tables and other tables for card playing. In the center was a grill, where excellent food was served.
Men, for the most part of dark complexion, shot pool and shuffled cards at the back. They dined, often with ladies, in the grill and went to smoke in the lobby.
The manager, a short, broad-shouldered man, with deep set, gleaming eyes, presided at a desk near the door and scrutinized all comers.
To this man, on the very night of which we are speaking, there came a youth. This youth was dressed in a suit of modest gray. He wore a dark tie, a gray shirt and black shoes. He was dark complexioned with dark eyes and close cropped hair. He was very slender of build. His fingers were extremely long; his feet small.
In his hand this boy bore a card. In one corner of the card was a secret number done in red ink. Truth is, everyone who entered here possessed such a card, marked in just this manner. Without the card, they did not enter.