“Let’s go around,” added Maguire.
They went, the significant red light over the transom at 68 telling its own story. Strolling leisurely up, they knocked. At the very first sound a painted denizen of the half-world opened the door.
“Where’s Adele?” asked Maguire as the two, hats on as usual, stepped in.
“She’s gone to bed.”
“Tell her to come down.”
They seated themselves deliberately in the gaudy mirrored parlor and waited, conversing between themselves in whispers. Presently a sleepy-looking woman of forty in a gaudy robe of heavy texture, and slippered in red, appeared.
“We’re here about that suicide case you had to-night. What about it? Who was she? How’d she come to be in that doorway around the corner? Come, now,” Maguire added, as the madam assumed an air of mingled injured and ignorant innocence, “you know. Can that stuff! How did she come to take poison?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the woman with the utmost air of innocence. “I never heard of any suicide.”
“Aw, come now,” insisted Delahanty, “the girl around the corner. You know. We know you’ve got a pull, but we’ve got to know about this case, just the same. Come across now. It won’t be published. What made her take the poison?”
Under the steady eyes of the officers the woman hesitated, but finally weakened.