Into the room crowded a dozen grinning policemen, followed, to her modest shame, by her adored family prophet, the Reverend Gantry. But it was not the cheerful, laughing Mr. Gantry that she knew. He held out his arm in a horrible gesture of holiness, and bawled, “Scarlet woman! Thy sins be upon thy head! No longer are you going to get away with leading poor unfortunate young men into the sink and cesspool of iniquity! Sergeant! Draw your revolver! These women are known to be up to every trick!”
“All right, sure, loot!” giggled the brick-faced police sergeant.
“Oh, rats! This girl looks as dangerous as a goldfish, Gantry,” remarked Bill Kingdom, of the Advocate-Times . . . he who was two hours later to do an epic of the heroism of the Great Crusader.
“Let’s see what the other girl’s up to,” snickered one of the policemen.
They all laughed very much as they looked into the bedroom, where a half-dressed girl and a man shrank by the window, their faces sick with shame.
It was with her—ignoring Bill Kingdom’s mutters of “Oh, drop it! Pick on somebody your size!”—that Elmer the vice-slayer became really Biblical.
Only the insistence of Bill Kingdom kept Lieutenant Gantry from making his men load the erring one into the patrol wagon in her chemise.
Then Elmer led them to a secret den where, it was securely reported, men were ruining their bodies and souls by guzzling the devil’s brew of alcohol.
VII
Mr. Oscar Hochlauf had been a saloon-keeper in the days before prohibition, but when prohibition came, he was a saloon-keeper. A very sound, old-fashioned, drowsy, agreeable resort was Oscar’s Place; none of the grander public houses had more artistic soap scrawls on the mirror behind the bar; none had spicier pickled herring.