"Well, that's your end of the story! I'm mighty glad you stopped it. Here's my end. You remember two-fingered Moll, who was our first client? The one who insisted on being referred to as a lady? The one who got converted and quit the game and who thought she was being pursued by the racetrack gang because she was trying to live decent?"
George smiled in remembrance. "Well, she called me up to know if there was any penalty for renting a house to Mike the Goat and his wife and old Salubrious the Armenian, who had a lady friend they were keeping from the cops against her will. She said they weren't going to hurt the lady, and I could see her every day to prove it. I advised her to keep out of it, of course; but she was strong for it, because of what she called the big money. I explained carefully that if anything should happen, her past reputation would go against her. But she kept saying it was straight, until I absolutely forbade her to do it, and she promised not to."
"Mike and his woman, and Old Salubrious!" echoed Remington. "And E. Eliot locked up with them for two days!"
He shivered, partly at the memory of his own mealy-mouthed protest.
"Well," he said, and there was an air of finality in his tone, "I'm glad I stopped the whole infamous business."
Mentally he decided to get Noonan on the telephone the first thing in the morning and make certain that the plan was abandoned. He continued his chat with Evans.
"But, Penny, why this agonizing of Noonan? What has he to lose by the better conditions in Kentwood? Why should he——"
Outside of a neat white dwelling in the suburbs of Whitewater, four figures were struggling in the night toward a vine-covered door—that door which appeared so attractively in the Welfare Bulletin of the Toledo Blade Steel Company's publicity program as the "prize garden home of J. Agricola, roller."
A woman stood in the doorway, holding the door open. Two women, who had been carried by two men, from an automobile at the gate, were forced through. There the men left them with their hostess.
"I was only looking for one of yez," she said, hospitably, "but you're bote welcome. Now, ladies, I'm goin' to make you comfortable. It won't do no good to scream, so I'm goin' to take your gags off. And I hope you, lady, haven't been inconvenienced by a handkerchief. We could just as well have arranged for your comfort, too."